The Rialto Report

Bionca was one of the more formidable adult film stars of the late golden age. She was a tall, striking performer, appearing in over 350 films and countless magazine spreads for 20 years from 1984 through to the early 2000s. She was known for her often-outrageous on-screen performances and smoldering lesbian scenes, and was one of the first to make films in Europe as well as the U.S. with producer Lenny Burtman. But Bionca wasn’t just an actor – she was the rare example of a female porn star who became a successful director too. She launched her own production company, Exquisite Pleasures, and made the award-winning Taking It To The Limit series in the mid 1990s. And then there was her marriage to Bruce Seven. Bruce was a notorious director of adult films that alternated between the vanilla line of videos he shot for Vivid Entertainment featuring Ginger Lynn, lesbian films such as Where the Girls Sweat, and S&M fetish and bondage films like House of Dark Dreams that he made for Evil Angel. For a time, Bionca and Bruce were the industry’s power couple, shooting films, making money, and winning awards. But theirs was a tempestuous relationship, and stories of their on-set fights were legendary. And then Bruce died, and suddenly Bionca was left with an uncertain future. So who is Bionca, and what does she remember about those turbulent, rollercoaster years? And what is she doing today This is her story. This podcast is 102 minutes long. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Bionca         Bionca with Candida Royalle Bionca with Nina Hartley     * Bionca and Bruce Seven’s Wedding     Amber Lynn and Sharon Mitchell look on   Bionca with Tom Byron     * Bionca   Photos on the mantle with Debi Diamond with Bruce Seven * The post Bionca: The Daredevil Amazon – Podcast 121 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In 1970, Chuck Traynor – former Marine, sexploitation dabbler, successful Miami bar owner and less successful drug smuggler, met Linda Boreman – a hippie drifter who’d recently had her newborn taken from her and was recovering from a harrowing car accident. They were both looking for something new, a fresh start – Chuck wanted financial opportunities that would prove his macho worth; Linda wanted direction and acceptance. The way they tell it, they met and fell in love. They lived together, partied together, worked together. Then Chuck lost his bar. This led to money troubles that led to sex work and the start of domestic violence. This violence followed a well-established pattern of conflict building to physical outburst, followed by a reconciliation period of intimacy and re-connection. Linda’s allegations were sometimes inconsistent, but were never disputed by Chuck. He said it was just part and parcel of his background and their lifestyle at the time. In summer 1971, Chuck and Linda got married. A month later, Chuck won his court case for drug smuggling and was a free man. No longer legally tied to Florida, Chuck persuaded Linda to go with him to New York to see if they could claim a stake in the city’s burgeoning adult film business. Chuck was excited about the money they could make; Linda was hopeful the change would break the cycle of abuse. Within a year they would be internationally famous, their lives turned upside down, and the figureheads of the new ‘porno chic’ movement. This is Part Three of the untold story of Chuck Traynor – with contributions from Linda Lovelace, Eric Edwards, Gerard Damiano, Eric Edwards, Harry Reems, Larry Revene, Tallie Cochrane… and Chuck Traynor himself – all talking about the notorious loops Chuck and Linda made in 1971. This podcast is 40 minutes long. Listen to, or read, Part One and Part Two here. —————————————————————————————— Advisory A quick word before this particular episode. You know this is a podcast about the early adult film industry. And that means that we tackle topics that often aren’t, let’s say, acceptable dinner table conversation in polite society. Even allowing for that however, this podcast episode is a little different. The themes and story lines are highly problematic and we recognize that this installment may not be for everyone. Having said that, we’ve tried to present the events in an accurate way with the views of all key participants. This is an additional trigger warning for particularly sensitive X-rated subject matter. * In the previous episode of ‘Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story’: Chuck was born in Connecticut in 1937 to a single mother. He was raised by his grandparents amid rumors of his mother’s escorting and involvement with mobsters. Eventually the whole family moved down to Florida. Chuck served in the marines, before working on the fringes of the sexploitation business through his romantic involvement with the pin-up photographer Bunny Yeager. He married three times, but Chuck always wanted more, and in the late 1960s, he owned a biker bar that was a front for prostitution, and then masterminded a smuggling operation, importing marijuana into Florida from the Caribbean. And then in 1970, he was busted for smuggling drugs, and met Linda Boreman – who would later become Linda Lovelace. After a year of turbulent times together, they set off for New York to look at opportunities within the new sex industry there. * 1. Chuck Traynor and Linda arrive in New York When Chuck and Linda Traynor hitched a ride with a friend from Florida to New York City in 1971, they were heading towards a metropolis at an inflection point. The growth the city had experienced in the 1960s was fast being replaced by economic free fall. New York was shedding over a hundred thousand jobs a year and no industry was safe. Violent crime rates – including homicide – had more than doubled since 1965. Conditions were so bad that year that 85% of the city’s police officers went on strike for over a week. But one part of New York was booming in 1971 – and that was the adult industry. Men’s magazines stuffed Times Square bookstore racks. Short sex films looped endlessly in peep show machines. And just a few months before Chuck and Linda’s arrival, the breakthrough hardcore feature Mona the Virgin Nymph had opened at the Tivoli theater on 50th and 8th. The sex business in New York was so pervasive that even though the city faced record crime and financial devastation, Mayor John Lindsay still carved out a portion of the police force to fight prostitution and pornography in Times Square. New York’s stage was set for a hustler from Florida and his new wife looking to take part in the nascent sex scene. Think of Chuc

When Linda Lovelace met Chuck Traynor, it would have profound implications for both of them. And it would impact adult film and popular culture in America. If they hadn’t met, there would be no Deep Throat (1972), no porno chic, no mainstream debate about an adult film in the wake of the sexual revolution. When Linda and Chuck first met, both were at crossroads in their lives. Chuck had been through three marriages, sporadic work in the sexploitation business, and was awaiting trial on a major drug smuggling bust. Linda was wandering aimlessly between New York and Florida, had lost a child, and was recovering from a horrific car accident. In many respects, they were perfect for each other at this moment in time: Chuck was growing bored of the high-maintenance bar girls who gave him sassy lip. Owning a successful business had made him more confident; running a drug smuggling operation had made him more cunning. Linda was tired of drifting aimlessly and needing more than the passive, directionless hippie boys she hung out with. She was looking for direction, an identity, her purpose. In short, Chuck was looking for someone to make an imprint on, and Linda wanted to be imprinted. This is Part Two of the untold story of Chuck Traynor. This podcast is 32 minutes long. Listen to, or read Part One here. —————————————————————————————— In the previous episode of ‘Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story’: Chuck was born in Connecticut in 1937 to a single mother. He was raised by his grandparents amid rumors of his mother’s escorting and involvement with mobsters. Eventually the whole family moved down to Florida. Chuck served in the marines, before working on the fringes of the sexploitation business through his romantic involvement with the pin-up photographer Bunny Yeager. He married three times, but Chuck always wanted more, and in the late 1960s, he owned a biker bar that was a front for prostitution, and then masterminded a smuggling operation, importing marijuana into Florida from the Caribbean. And then in 1970, he was busted for smuggling drugs, and met Linda Boreman – who would later become Linda Lovelace. * 1. Who was Linda Lovelace? Linda Boreman was born January 10th, 1949. Her family – parents John and Dorothy and two older sisters, Barbara and Jeanne – lived on the top floor of a five-story walk-up in the Bronx. It was a largely conventional upbringing. John was a police officer. Dorothy, a waitress. The girls attended Catholic schools where Linda was an average student. According to later interviews, she claimed her only childhood ambition was to become a nun. Linda Boreman When Linda turned 16, her father John retired from the police force, and the family moved down to south Florida. John took a job working security for Eastern Airlines. Linda enrolled in Carol City High School, a budding hippie chick. Outgoing and warm, Linda soon made a friend named Patsy Carroll. Patsy was impressed by Linda’s New York accent and fashion sense. Linda and Patsy got close fast. They went everywhere together, to places like the Cloverleaf Bowling Alley and the municipal auditorium where they watched live music on weekends. They both began dating members of a local band called the Shags. It was innocent, teenage fun. Then Patsy’s father, a military man, was transferred to Virginia, and the family moved with him. With her best friend gone, Linda became restless and bored. She asked her parents if she could move back to New York and live with her sister Barbara. Said she’d finish high school in Hartsdale, half an hour north of the city. But no sooner had she settled up north, than Linda decided she wanted to return to Florida. Linda, second from left Back down south, she took a few classes to finish her high school degree. Then in the fall of 1967, Linda enrolled at Dade County Junior College. But after only a few courses, she dropped out. She was restless again. She didn’t know what she wanted to do or where she wanted to do it. Without the guidance of Catholic school nuns or her strict parents, Linda was easily lost. So she headed back to New York yet again. She worked at the boutique her sister had opened with a boyfriend, Larry Marchiano. She hung around with a peace-loving hippie crowd, exploring drugs and sexual freedom. Then, Linda got pregnant. First she was shocked; then she got excited. Ever since she was a little girl, Linda had wanted to be a mom someday – to have someone that was hers, that she could care for. Linda gave birth to a baby boy she affectionately named Alfie. But while she was recovering from the anesthesia after childbirth, her mother Dorothy had her sign some papers. Linda thought they were standard hospital forms. Turns out they were adoption contracts. As her head cleared, Linda realized what had happe

We all know the story of Linda Lovelace and Chuck Traynor, right? Linda was the star of the groundbreaking adult film Deep Throat, and Chuck was Linda’s husband and manager. When the movie was released, Linda did tons of television and newspaper interviews sharing how happy she was to showcase sexual liberation and personal freedom. She capped the publicity rounds with a book, ‘The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace’, in which she shared her sexual fantasies and experiences. A real poster child for women’s liberation, then, right? Not so fast. On the heels of the book’s publication, and little more than a year after the film was released, Linda’s story began to change. She divorced Chuck and began sharing extremely troubling details about their former relationship. Now she said Chuck was her pimp. He was her abuser. He was her tormentor. Linda published full details of these allegations in two additional books: ‘Ordeal’ and ‘Out of Bondage’. The stories involved beatings, guns, and imprisonment. And then Chuck married Marilyn Chambers – the other most famous porn star of the decade. Her experience of Chuck differed greatly from Linda’s. She spoke well of him and stayed married to him for years. Nevertheless, Linda’s description of Chuck is how we understand him today. In the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat, Linda’s sister Barbara Boreman curses the day Linda ever met Chuck . Peter Sarsgaard’s portrayal of Chuck in the 2013 film Lovelace is infused with cruelty. And there are countless TV interviews, magazine articles, books, and even a PhD thesis recounting the same story of Chuck’s manipulation of Linda and his brutality. History is written by winners and in this era of Me Too, Chuck has ended up as the quintessential loser in this story. And maybe that’s correct. But who was Chuck Traynor really? And what happens when we try to understand him, and how this self-described small-time hick played such an outsized role in the adult industry – and by extension, in pop culture at large? What’s surprising is that, despite his pivotal role in the early porn business, there’s never been a detailed investigation into Chuck’s life. He never told his own story before he died 20 years ago, and no one has ever tried to track down his numerous ex-wives, friends, or family members. Over the past years, The Rialto Report contacted just about everyone who knew Chuck. What emerges is a story more far complex and interesting than anything imagined – it’s a tale of family intrigue, drug smuggling, nudist films, biker bars, tax fraud, political insurgency, illegal porn loops, and, of course, Deep Throat. So is Chuck a misunderstood hustler? An opportunistic conman? Or a devious Svengali exercising a controlling influence over people in his orbit for his sinister purposes? This is Part One of the untold story of Chuck Traynor. This podcast is 35 minutes long. —————————————————————————————— 1. Chuck Traynor: In The Beginning Let’s start at the very beginning. Research Chuck’s history and straight away, you’ll find records listing Angelo and Theresa Traynor as his parents. Angelo Traynor was born in Italy in 1885. A good guess is that his family name was anglicized from the common Sicilian surname ‘Traina’, when he arrived in the U.S. at the age of 9 and settled with his family in Westchester, New York. When Angelo was 26 in 1911, he met and married Theresa Margaret George, a native New Yorker. The couple had three children in relatively quick succession: daughter Violet, born in 1914, a son John born in 1918, and a second daughter, Elaine, born in 1919. By 1925, Angelo was 40 and had saved up enough to start his own business, the Mount Vernon Wholesale Produce Company, selling fruit and vegetables to local shops and restaurants. He named Theresa as a fellow director, though in truth, she mostly stayed home raising their three kids. By all accounts, the Traynor family was happy and stable. Eldest daughter Violet got married and moved out of the home. Son John was hard working in his first full-time job. And Elaine – well, she liked to party and have fun, but her parents were confident she’d find her way eventually. Then, at the end of 1936, Angelo and Theresa were faced with an unwelcome surprise: Elaine, just 17 and unwed, was pregnant. The father was a local boy named Everett. Elaine hadn’t known him long but claimed it was love. Well, maybe. At least she knew she liked him and she thought he liked her. Angelo and Theresa talked through the family’s options. They could push for a shotgun wedding, but what little they knew about Everett wasn’t encouraging. He was just a kid like Elaine. Or they could put the baby up for adoption, but turning family away wasn’t something thi

For a time in the 1970s, Harry Reems was the biggest and most recognizable male sex star on the planet. He was a porn Burt Reynolds, famous for his mustache, his sense of fun, and his sexual prowess. One critic described him as being all the Marx brothers rolled into one, a big mess of zany humor, tinged with a hint of melancholy. Harry’s public life had a three-act structure: He was famous because of Deep Throat (1972) – the groundbreaking adult film which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Then he was infamous because of the federal trial that followed in which he and various New York mobsters were accused of interstate distribution of pornography. And finally he was forgotten when he ended up a helpless alcoholic in the 1980s, sleeping in a dumpster, unable to take care of himself. But what happened when the three acts were over? The public narrative was simple. Harry managed to get off alcohol and clean himself up. Harry became a successful realtor in Utah. And Harry got religion and became a born-again Christian. As for his porn past, well, that was ancient history. He refused to talk about it, everyone told me. It was contrary to his new-found Jesus beliefs, and he regretted every minute of it. So he never gave interviews. The one exception was when Hollywood came calling, and he spoke briefly about his most famous film for the documentary, ‘Inside Deep Throat’ So what happened to this household name of adult film history whose rise and fall felt so emblematic of the golden age of adult film itself? The Rialto Report‘s Ashley West became friends with Harry, and spoke with him on many occasions. The is the search for the real Harry Reems. This podcast is 61 minutes long. ———————————————————————————— Harry Reems     Harry with Ben Gazzara   Harry, with Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty     * The post Deep Throat @ 50: Searching for the Real Harry Reems – Podcast 117 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The film director and production designer Alfred Sole passed away this past Tuesday at the age of 78. I first became aware of Alfred about 15 years ago when I was looking through the New York Times archives. I came across a 1973 article about a controversial adult film called Deep Sleep. The article caught my eye because the Times almost never covered porn movies and because the story started out pretty folksy. A young guy in a small New Jersey suburb with a love of cinema had made an adult film. He’d never seen one before but he desperately wanted to make a movie and porn was the only type he could get backing for. With money from members of the local community, he enlisted his family, friends and some local actors to shoot the picture. Even the mayor’s wife was in it, though like many of Alfred’s family and friends, she performed in a non-sex role. But then the tone of the article took a turn: it said Alfred and the film’s lead performers were now under investigation by the FBI and facing significant jail time. Eager to learn more, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the FBI files. I eventually got back about a hundred pages of field reports and interviews detailing a robust investigation. What wasn’t included was any hint of how the case ended. So I called adult performer Kim Pope, an early sexploitation actress who’d made the transition to hardcore films. She had been the female star of Deep Sleep and shared her memories of making the movie and the prosecution that followed. I asked if she’d kept in touch with Alfred and she said no – but that if I found him to please send her best wishes. Despite the controversy, she had only fond memories of him. Lucky for me Alfred wasn’t hard to find. After Deep Sleep he directed a few horror films, including the cult favorite Alice, Sweet Alice from 1976 which featured a young Brooke Shields. He then went on to a prolific career in Hollywood as a production designer, working on popular TV shows like Veronica Mars, Castle and MacGuyver. Alfred generously shared the story of Deep Sleep with me. I was fascinated by the tale, I decided to make a short film about it – something that tickled Alfred to no end. You can watch that early film below. Our coverage of Deep Sleep was picked up by the Daily Beast. And that coverage led to a major documentary company deal to produce the story. Over the past months, as a producer on the documentary project, I spoke with Alfred often. We were in pre-production and there were lots of details to work through. Alfred worried about the fact that we all wanted to make him the heart of the story. He was concerned that his memory wasn’t as good as it used to be. That in recent months he’d found himself searching for words much more than he used to. He said he didn’t want to let us down. I reassured him that there was no way that he could. In the end though, Alfred was just so excited about the project. Then, like everyone else, I learned the news of Alfred’s death this past week. I’m so saddened by the loss of someone I was fortunate enough to call my friend these past 15 years. I’m grateful that so much of his creative output is available for audiences to appreciate. And I will keep doing all I can for the story of Alfred Sole and Deep Sleep to reach as many people as possible. To mark his passing, we are premiering our short film, and reprising the 2015 podcast we made on Alfred Sole and the Ballad of Deep Sleep. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Deep Sleep – The Short Film * Deep Sleep – The Podcast In 1972, Alfred Sole, a first time filmmaker, made an X-rated film called ‘Deep Sleep’. He didn’t know much about adult films or the industry, so he shot it in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey and using a cast and crew made up of friends and family members. This meant that the local lawyer, banker, policeman, high school teachers, funeral home director, the mayor’s wife, even Alfred’s wife and his mother were part of the film-making group. It seemed like everyone in Paterson knew someone who was involved in the making of ‘Deep Sleep’. And so predictably when it came out it was a smash hit in New Jersey, with long lines of people breaking box office records trying to get into the theaters to see it. But not everyone was impressed. And what followed was one of the most remarkable and notorious prosecutions of an adult film in American history. First the filmmakers were indicted on a state basis under an ancient anti-fornication statute, and then on a federal level for interstate transportation of pornography. Suddenly Alfred Sole found himself at the center of a storm. He was under attack both from the law and from everyone who’d helped him make the film in the first place. On this Rialto Report, the people involved speak out for the first time in 40 years. We speak to – Alfred Sole, Deep Sleep’s director           Ki

Charles William Rotsler (1926–1997) was an award-winning artist and science fiction author. Bill was also involved in the burgeoning adult film industry starting in the late 1950s, first as a stills photographer on the set of adult films, and later when he wrote, directed, or acted in over 20 adult films during his career with Boxoffice International Pictures, In 1966, he created Adam Film Quarterly, later called Adam Film World, one of the earliest magazines to provide commentary on pornographic films. He wrote hundreds of articles using a plethora of pseudonyms including ‘Shannon Carse’, ‘Cord Heller’, ‘Clay McCord’, and ‘Merrill Dakota’ – sometimes even interviewing himself. He also wrote the seminal book, Contemporary Erotic Cinema in 1973. But this series of articles is not about Bill Rotsler. It’s about a group of friends of his. Four friends. Four women, to be more specific, who at various times lived with him, and featured in his films, photographs, and magazines. Their lives intersected in his house, as they played their parts in helping establish the adult film industry in Los Angeles. He called this group, ‘The Gruesome Foursome.’ The Rialto Report tracked down each of the four to hear about their lives. This is the third part: Uschi Digard. The interview is taken from our podcast with Uschi. We have added additional information taken from lengthier conversations we have had with Uschi over the years. All photographs are taken by Bunny Yeager, and are courtesy of Grapefruit Moon Gallery. You can read Part 1, the story of Kathie Hilton (and Gerard Broulard) here , and Part 2, Malta’s story here. ———————————————————————————————————————————————- Uschi Digard Uschi Digard always seemed to be larger than life. She was an indestructible, formidable, pinup beauty who was emblematic of the sexual revolution in California. From the late 1960s through to the early 1980s, she was in hundreds of magazine spreads, had many issues dedicated to her, and appeared in countless softcore films, too. Her Amazonian features and natural good looks meant she was always in demand as she proved popular with fans. Or in the words of director Russ Meyer, her close friend and frequent collaborator, “She was a buxom cantilevered barracuda who was a Trojan at work.” Russ was a man’s man, a World War II veteran, and a tough task master, and in Uschi he met his match and found the perfect foil. The combination of her sex appeal with her own sentimental tireless work ethic resulted in a close friendship that lasted decades. But for someone with such a larger than life presence, Uschi was also elusive and deeply private. Her face and body may have been all over the magazines, but her own voice was notably absent. Throughout her long career as a nude model and actress, she revealed everything, but revealed nothing. She rarely gave interviews, and the scant biographical information that was published was often fabricated. It was said that she was an interpreter of the United Nations. She came from Sweden. She had a perfume line that was big in Asia. And if her published birthdate is to be believed, then she recently celebrated her 70th birthday. All this is false. And as it turns out, the wealth of untrue information bothers Uschi herself as well. The trouble is how do you correct so many misconceptions without drawing attention to yourself? How do you go public, but stay private? * 1. Childhood I suspect the theme of our conversation today is going to be the rumors and misinformation that have circulated over the years, which I’m hoping we can set the record straight. So let me start with one right at the beginning. There’s been much conjecture about where you’ve come from. I’ve seen references to Sweden, Switzerland, Holland, and my favorite is Bismarck, North Dakota. So where were you actually born? Actually born in Switzerland, but lived in all those countries, apart from Bismarck, North Dakota. I don’t want to be indiscreet and ask your birthdate, but there is a birthdate that’s widely quoted as being August the 15th, the 1948. Totally wrong. Couldn’t be wronger. Well, let’s leave the mystery there. What was the nationality of your family? Swiss French. Did you have a big family? Yeah. I was the youngest by eight years. How did that shape your character? It kind of made me think more like an adult and be more independent. And I always did my own ship. I remember when I was little – and things didn’t go the way I want – I would move out temporarily. I had two neighbors that would put me up. So if my mother rubbed me the wrong way, I would have a little bag and I’d pack

The pioneering adult film, Deep Throat, was shot 50 years ago today. The scene was south Florida, and it was Super Bowl Sunday, January 16th, 1972. The local Miami Dolphins were playing, and so the streets of the city were deserted, meaning it was a perfect time to make a film when you didn’t exactly want to draw attention to what you were doing. The filmmakers were a group of New Yorkers who’d made the 1,300-mile trip south to film an explicit sex film. Nothing special was expected. After all, this was a time when no one was sure quite just how legal this was. It was a reasonably ambitious production for the standards of an X-rated shoot. This film had a plot, a script, its own musical soundtrack, and was being made by a crew who had some experience. The film’s budget was rumored to have come from the mob, but given that it was enough for them to travel down to Florida for the week in the middle of a cold New York winter, who needed to ask questions? What happened next is history: ‘Deep Throat’ was the porn film that went mainstream. It became a genuine sensation, one of the most profitable films – of any kind – ever made, costing a few thousand dollars and bringing in a whopping three hundred million, five hundred million, six hundred million dollars. You take your pick. No one knows for sure. But ‘Deep Throat’ was more than just a runaway financial success. It had a genuine cultural impact, responsible for ushering in the era known as “porno chic,” middle-class respectable types getting hardcore about hardcore. For a short while, you couldn’t escape it. The New York Times featured long articles about it, Johnny Carson and Bob Hope made jokes about it, and the crowds of people who lined up to buy tickets included Truman Capote and Jackie Kennedy Onassis. When the Watergate story broke, the biggest political scandal of the 20th century, it seemed normal that one of the protagonists was given a nickname taken from the film’s title. Not bad for a film about a sexually frustrated woman, whose psychiatrist discovers that her clitoris is located in her throat, and so offers to help hone her oral sex skills. So who was responsible for this hugely successful and influential film? The answer surprised many back in 1972. It all came down to one man, Gerard Damiano, the film’s director. But he wasn’t the type of person you might expect to be making a porn film. Gerard Damiano (right) with David Davidson He was no counter-cultural rebel like many who were throwing themselves into sex films at the time. Gerard was raised as a Catholic, and was a family man with a wife and two children. He wasn’t a mobster like other Italians in the business either. Gerard ran a beauty salon in Queens. And he wasn’t a sleazy, sex-obsessed smut hound. Gerard was an aspiring filmmaker, albeit with little formal training and no contacts in the mainstream film industry. In short, Gerard Damiano was an unlikely pioneer. Given that, how did ‘Deep Throat’ ever get made? Despite its popularity, many questions still remain fifty years later. In this unpublished interview conducted shortly before Gerard passed away in 2008, he speaks about his life before ‘Deep Throat’ – as well as his experience making ‘Deep Throat’. He talks about the truth behind where the money for the film came from, as well as the claim from Linda Lovelace that she was forced to perform in it. This is how Gerard Damiano remembered the whole experience decades after it took place. This podcast is 50 minutes long. * The post Deep Throat @ 50: Gerard Damiano – The Director: Podcast 116 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Last week a new docu-drama premiered on Netflix. It’s called Crime Scene – Times Square – and we were pleased to be Producers on it. The show examines how the environment in New York’s Times Square in the late 1970s and early 1980s – a nearly-lawless area rife with drugs and sex work – made it possible for one man to commit, and nearly get away with, unthinkable acts of violence. Many of the characters interviewed for the show have appeared as subjects of Rialto Report podcast interviews – people such as the filmmaker Larry Revene, adult film actress and writer Veronica Vera, and sex show performer Joseph Stryker. And then there’s Marty Hodas, the self-proclaimed Porno King of New York. Perhaps more than anyone else, Marty was responsible for the change in Times Square that took place from the 1960s, when the area descended into such a dangerous area. It was Marty who introduced sexual peep shows into the area, and then ran an empire of bookstores, adult theaters, and massage parlors. I first came across Marty when I read articles in the newspapers from the early 1970s. The sex trade may have been illegal back then, but Marty didn’t hide – in fact, he enjoyed the publicity and regularly appeared on the covers of newspaper and on interview shows. A few years ago, I got hold of a number for Marty and called him. I said I’d love to meet him – and hear about the old days. He invited me over to his apartment and served me a feast of pastrami, shrimp, and cheeses. And he talked. This is Marty’s story – and the story of Times Square. This podcast is 54 minutes long. ———————————————————————————————————————– A Rialto Report dinner with Jamie Gillis, Marty Hodas, and Larry Revene *   The post ‘Crime Scene – Times Square’: The Life of Marty Hodas – Podcast 38 (reprise) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

June Mack was dead. And no one was on the hook for her murder. Somehow being shot by Russ Meyer made her almost-famous, but being shot by a mystery killer made her almost-forgotten. She’d come to Tinseltown to escape. To start a new life – and she’d been a movie star, bared her charms in magazines, and shared her body in nightly schemes. She made money, bought cars, and lived in clover. But then June Mack crossed paths with Greg Cavalli. The normal story of boy meets girl. If boy meets girl when he buys phone sex. Then boy falls in love with girl over the phone. Before boy goes to girl’s house and finds there’s more to her than he expected. Much more. And then girl is shot dead. But Greg was officially not guilty. He’d been fingered by the cops for June’s murder, and put on trial. He got off. And it wasn’t even close. So if Greg didn’t kill June, who did? Sometimes to get to the heart of a story, you have to look at the outsides, the characters around the edges. People like Arthur Michael Pascal, who ran a shady L.A. security company, a collection of hitmen for hire. Or William Rider, Larry Flynt’s head of security, who used Pascal’s guys to protect the porn king, and eliminate anyone who got in their way. People like Bill Mentzer, the hitman who worked for Pascal, who was hired to protect Greg Cavalli and his family from supposed threats like June Mack. And there was Laney, Bill Mentzer’s girlfriend who dealt cocaine to the stars – who also needed protection. They were all connected to June in different ways. Someone must know the truth. The truth about who killed June Mack. Who really killed June Mack. This podcast is 45 minutes long. June Mack ———————————————————————————————————————– Whether Greg Cavalli was guilty or not didn’t amount to a hill of beans. He couldn’t be tried for the same crime twice. “Never,” said LAPD brass. “He’s been tried once. That’s it. He’s a free man. Forever.” So the Cavalli family retreated. Big money is big power, and big power gets used wrong. That’s the system. They’d won the game. There was no need to stay on the stage. Other players had less luck in the aftermath of the trial. Christian Pierce, June’s devoted follower who’d been with her when she was shot, died of AIDS. June’s transexual friend, Robin Taylor, disappeared, swallowed up by the lonely streets. Arthur Michael Pascal, owner of the security company that had hired William Mentzer and Robert Lowe to tackle June Mack, retired his business. His health was poor. Dirty schemes earn more than straight job income streams, but they lower your life expectancy too. Pascal had had enough. Then there was William Rider, Larry Flynt’s head of security, who’d hired Pascal and Bill Mentzer to protect Flynt. Rider had got into a scrap with the porn king himself. Their beef was over John DeLorean, the car magnate. Maker of the ‘Back to the Future’ sportscar. DeLorean had been charged with cocaine trafficking. 55 pounds of it. That’s $24 million of profit. Or big trouble if you get caught. And DeLorean had just got caught. But it was government entrapment. DeLorean had been framed. The coke scheme was a sting put together by Feds anxious to take down the auto king. DeLorean had only one person who could help him. Larry Flynt had the proof that would clear him. It consisted of hours of video tapes shot by federal agents. The tapes showed Feds blackmailing DeLorean in interrogation rooms. The tapes showed Feds threatening to kill DeLorean’s daughter. The tapes showed Feds telling DeLorean he had to proceed with their drug deal or else they’d nail him. Trouble was Flynt had acquired these tapes illegally, stealing them from government offices. Which meant Flynt was in trouble too now. Flynt refused to reveal how he got his hands on them. It was a freedom of speech thing, he said. He was locked up for contempt of court. So Flynt hatched a plan. He told his loyal lieutenant Bill Rider to lie for him under oath. Just tell the judge the tapes were leaked by an FBI mole. Then they’d all be out of the soup. Turned out Rider wasn’t that loyal. Rider refused to go along. Flynt was mad. Flynt fired Rider. Flynt went further. Did everything he could to ruin Rider. Publicly said Rider raped his daughter. Privately said he’d kill Rider. Rider had balls. Rider responded. He filed a harassment suit against the sex magazine peddler. And the jury found Flynt guilty of malice and oppression. The jury awarded Rider $8.6 million. The prosecution attorneys agreed: “It’s unheard of for an employee to be harassed in this way after he’s been terminated.” Rider had lifted big money from Flynt’s bank account. Now he could afford to pick and choose his gigs. Now he could afford to go straight. So who else

Somehow June Mack was a footnote in her own life. She was a footnote in film history after she appeared in a Russ Meyer film, Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens. A footnote for her family who forgot she existed. A footnote in L.A., the jaded city where she’d re-invented herself. And a footnote in a shooting that left her dead. It seems strange. June Mack was big, black, and beautiful. So why did she end up just a footnote? She died in 1984. Many accounts of her murder still linger on message boards in dusty corners of cyberspace. Each tries to figure out how and why she died. Jimmy McDonough in his biography of Russ Meyer wrote: “June was murdered when a drug dealer was going to shoot her boyfriend. She stood in front of the guy to protect him, and took the bullet.” Sounds heroic. Sounds like something that her film character, Junkyard Sal, might have done. But was it true? Other reports say she was the target of gangland hit, someone wanted her wiped out. Or was her death just an accident? Bad place, bad time. Bad outcome. I went to looking for an answer. A key that would unlock the truth behind the mystery. Maybe the clue was somewhere in her short life. Maybe the way she lived would reveal the way she died. Not many people were talking. Many were dead, others had long disappeared. And some just don’t like the sound of their own voice. June lived in the shadows. A film noir world, inhabited by a cast of misfits, gangsters, and lowlifes, where no one played it straight. You turn over her rock, and you uncover all kinds of stories: from drug deals, sex work, and hit men, to soldiers of fortune, bent bodyguards, video-taped orgies, and movie deals. Throw in the Colombian mob, poisoned cocktails, the pornographer Larry Flynt, the producer of ‘The Godfather’ Robert Evans, even the stars from 1970s hit TV shows ‘Sanford and Son’ and ‘Welcome Back, Kotter.’ But at the end of day, it boiled down to this: Who killed June Mack? And then a second question: who really killed June Mack? This podcast is 39 minutes long. June Mack ———————————————————————————————————————– May 3, 1984. Los Angeles. It’s 10.30 in the evening, but it’s hotter than a whorehouse on nickel night. June Mack descends the steps of a friend’s building. It’s on the 6800 block of Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys. The street is dark with something more than night, but she is impossible to miss. Lacquered curly black wig, wild print dress, tan leather jacket, impossibly high heels. An arresting spectacle even in the dense shadows between the street lights. A friend, Christian Pierce, is next to her. They walk up the sidewalk, north of Vanowen St. They pass a car with shaded side windows. They pass a man leaning against the hood. A driver sits inside. June and Christian make no eye contact with either of them. As they walk past the car, the standing man says something. June turns to look at him. Christian turns to look at June. The rest takes place in slow motion. Christian sees June recognize the man. Christian sees June panic. Christian sees June bolt. Christian shouts at the man: “What do you want?” Gunshot cracks through the humid air. Christian grabs his stomach. He falls backwards. More shots ring out. June is hit from behind. She collapses on the street. Blood stains her clothing and spills on the sidewalk. The driver yells for the shooter to hurry, but the gunman has other ideas. He empties his weapon into June’s twisted body. He kicks both victims. Then he gets into the car. The vehicle speeds away into the night. June’s friend in the apartment building has heard the shots. She goes outside. She sees the claret aftermath, and calls the police. She stands near her motionless friends. She waits for the cop car to arrive. Medics show up first. Christian has been shot in the stomach. He’s alive. June has been shot in the head, the face, the back, and the chest. She’s dead. * “No women, no kids. That’s the rules,” says Leon in the film ‘The Professional.’ Hollywood’s view of a contract killer is bullshit. The real world has no qualms. If you have money, you can buy death. Anyone’s death. But did someone want June Mack dead, or was her death an accident? In the days after the hit, facts were noted. There just weren’t enough of them. June was African-American. She’d had enough plastic surgery that it was anyone’s guess whether she was closer to 20 or 50. Turned out she was 29. Heavy-set if you’re being polite. 250 pounds if you own a set of scales. The cops paid a visit to her fancy pad in West Hollywood. Judging by the furs and finery, she’d had money to burn. Kinky too. Slinky skivvies stuffed into closets next to dominatrix duds. Leather, whips, and handcuffs. Her frie

Let’s admit something: as much as the so-called golden age of adult film was a glamorous era, where sex movies competed with Hollywood blockbusters in theaters across the country, it wasn’t the most racially diverse workplace for a male performer. There was Johnnie Keyes, the African American star of Behind the Green Door in the early 1970s. There was Billy Dee, an accomplished mixed-race actor, who became a well-known face in the late 1970s. And then… that’s about it. Which is striking for a new industry that employed hundreds of people and made millions of dollars. In the 1980s, this trend continued. Which made someone like Field Marshal Bradley stand out. The Field Marshal, who went by the name F.M., was a towering presence. He looked like a black superman. A striking figure of strength. He displayed a muscular, cut body that always seemed shiny. He was the number one star of color, when that should have meant a lot more. Over the years, I’d heard stories about F.M. Bradley. He was the eternal bad boy, living out a wild life. He’d occasionally turned up at conventions saying he was about to make a comeback in the business. He didn’t seem to have a permanent address, and no one had his contact details. Many doubted he was still alive. And then I heard he’d been spotted – in a convalescent home in Vegas. Struggling with ill-health. He wasn’t even well enough do an interview. But we kept talking over several years, and eventually recorded an interview. Now this particular convalescent home wasn’t well-equipped for interviews with stars of the X-rated film industry, and so our conversation took place with the TV in the background, and people coming and going. We’d get interrupted constantly – such as when it was time to for F.M. to give his dinner order. I wanted to know what it had been like to be one of the few male performers of color in the 1980s. Where had he come from, and what was he doing now? And why was this one-time Superman now in a home? This is April Hall – and this is The Rialto Report. It’s not every day I get to interview a Field Marshal. The episode running time is 88 minutes. _________________________________________________________________________________ F.M Bradley High school graduation                         The post F.M. Bradley: Hiding in Plain Sight – Podcast 113 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The film director, Wakefield Poole, passed away this week. He was 85. I remember a girlfriend once catching me sat behind a pile of men’s magazines. Playboy, Mandate, Cheri magazine… I was engrossed in them, oblivious to her or anything else taking place around me. After looking at me for a while, she commented: “It’s really true. You do read sex magazines for the articles.” That’s also true for my interest in a film like Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand. On the one hand, the film was a pioneering American gay pornographic film. It was the first gay adult film to include credits and to be reviewed by the movie industry journal Variety. Everyone remembers Deep Throat as being the pioneering sex film, but Boys in the Sand premiered at the 55th Street Playhouse in Manhattan over six months before. And it was an immediate critical and commercial success. Long lines of people queued to see it every night. My interest in the film went beyond just the sex. I was fascinated by how it was produced on a budget of just $8,000. I was fascinated with Casey Donovan, the film’s blond Adonis who emerges from the water in the first scene. I was fascinated with Fire Island, a gay Shangri-La where it’s always summer. I was fascinated with the Frank house in which many of the scenes were filmed. Sidenote: A few years ago, I noticed the house was on the market for a million and a half. I called the agent and said I was interested in buying. I was semi-serious. I arranged a viewing. It is small but spectacular. The ‘Frank House’ was designed by the architect Andrew Geller in Fire Island Pines, NY, in 1958. It was designed after Rudy Frank, an ice cream entrepreneur, and his family had gone on vacation to Mexico and visited the Mayan ruins at Uxmal. They wanted a house inspired by the temples and the great stepped pyramids. The architect, Andrew Geller came up with something thoroughly modern but with ancient undertones in its inward-sloping walls. The house hadn’t changed in the five decades since the film was shot there. It was uncanny to look around and expect Casey Donovan to walk up to you at any moment. Most of all though, I was fascinated by the film’s director, Wakefield Poole. Wakefield came to adult films after a success career as a dancer, choreographer, and theatrical director. I was keen to talk to him. This podcast interview I did with him was one of the first we ever did. The episode running time is 100 minutes. _________________________________________________________________________________ Wakefield Poole On this episode of The Rialto Report, Wakefield Poole talks with remarkable candor about his life as a independent filmmaker and pioneer of gay rights, and Jim Tushinski talks about his new documentary, I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole. It’s a story of great highs, tragic lows, dance, films, drugs, acclaim, censorship, Fire Island, bath houses, AIDS, the mob, and much more. Wakefield Poole had quite a life. As a dancer he was a child prodigy, and in the late 1950s, he joined the Ballet Russe before going on to be in demand as a dancer, choreographer, and director on Broadway and in television for much of the 1960s. By the late 1960s, Wakefield had started experimenting with film, producing a number of acclaimed multimedia shows in New York, and then in 1971, he made his directorial film debut with the groundbreaking Boys in the Sand. Forget Deep Throat and porno chic for a moment. Boys in the Sand came out earlier, was critically acclaimed, and was a huge and artistic commercial success. It provided a template on how to market a sex film. It also launched the career of Casey Donovan, an iconic vision of gay masculinity. Not bad for a gay porn film that cost less than $5,000 to make. Wakefield’s cinematic style was immediately was immediately evident; here was a filmmaker who used his dance and theater background to create beautiful, erotic art films that engaged your mind as well as your senses. This was an era where making pornographic films meant that you were liable for prosecution and jail time. But Wakefield remained open, honest and outspoken – probably because he didn’t think of himself as a pornographer. He believed that films could be artistic as well as sexually explicit. In 1972, Wakefield went one step better and made Bijou – a surreal, psychedelic vision of sexual decadence that was an even more impressive film. It was another big hit. And then disaster. He and producer Marvin Shulman attempted to make a crossover film. It was called Bible! and was based on a trio of Old Testament stories about famous Biblical figures. It even starred Georgina Spelvin as Bathsheba. This time the production was lavish, the budget was extravagant, the film’s reception was cool. Wakefield’s life was turned dramatically upside down by the experience. 2013 sees the release of a documentary about Wakefield Poole’s life called I Always Said Yes: T

In the first part of the mini-series ‘The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp’, I went in search for the enigmatic Deep Throat actor with the mysterious past, who seemed to disappear from the face of the earth back in 1972. I spoke to Gerry Damiano and Harry Reems who worked with Dolly on ‘Deep Throat’, to actors who appeared in other films with her like Fred Lincoln and Jamie Gillis, even one of the first porn agents, Tallie Cochrane. In the second part, I found that Dolly had had a long and successful career on stage and in movies – as Helen Wood – long before she entered the adult film industry. In the third part, I went in search of Dolly Sharp, to find out why she had disappeared from New York shortly after she appeared in ‘Deep Throat.’ In this final episode, I look for Helen Wood. This podcast is 43 minutes long. ________________________________________________________________________________ Helen Wood takes New York   Helen in ‘Give A Girl A Break’   Helen Wood in the 1990s   Helen in the 1990s * The post The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp, Part 4: Whatever Happened to Helen Wood? – Podcast 112 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the first part of ‘The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp’, I went in search for the enigmatic Deep Throat actor with the mysterious past, who seemed to disappear from the face of the earth back in 1972. I spoke to Gerry Damiano and Harry Reems who worked with Dolly on ‘Deep Throat’, to actors who appeared in other films with her like Fred Lincoln and Jamie Gillis, even one of the first porn agents, Tallie Cochrane. In the second part, I found that Dolly had had a long and successful career on stage and in movies long before she entered the adult film industry. This is the third part of our mini-series, The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp – Part 3: Whatever Happened to Dolly Sharp? This podcast is 30 minutes long. ________________________________________________________________________________ Helen with Kurt Karzner, in Give a Girl a Break (1953)   Helen Wood, in the musical ‘Seventeen’   Helen Wood, in the musical ‘Seventeen’   Helen, in Give a Girl a Break (1953)   Helen at the Frontier in Las Vegas (late 1950s) * The post The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp, Part 3: Whatever Happened to Dolly Sharp? – Podcast 111 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the first part of ‘The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp’, I went in search for the enigmatic Deep Throat actor with the mysterious past, who seemed to disappear from the face of the earth back in 1972. I spoke to Gerry Damiano and Harry Reems who worked with Dolly on ‘Deep Throat’, to actors who appeared in other films with her like Fred Lincoln and Jamie Gillis, even one of the first porn agents, Tallie Cochrane. And what I found about her was surprising and remarkable. It turned out that Dolly had had a long and successful career on stage and in movies long before she entered the adult film industry. This is the second part of our mini-series, The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp – Part 2: Who Is Helen Wood? This podcast is 31 minutes long. ________________________________________________________________________________ Helen with Kurt Karzner, in Give a Girl a Break (1953)   Helen Wood, in the musical ‘Seventeen’   Helen Wood, in the musical ‘Seventeen’   Helen, in Give a Girl a Break (1953)   Helen at the Frontier in Las Vegas (late 1950s) * The post The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp, Part 2: Who Is Helen Wood? – Podcast 110 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Much has been written about the film Deep Throat since it premiered in New York in June 1972. You may even know the story by now… how the film was the biggest hit of the ‘porno chic’ phenomenon, how it turned actors like Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems into overnight stars, and how it all broke box office records. What’s also true is that the lives of those involved were never the same. – Linda Lovelace became America’s first porn star celebrity before turning into porn’s first victim, adopted by feminism as proof of porn’s damaging effect on women. – Harry Reems’ dreams of a mainstream acting career died overnight, and to make matters worse he was then put on trial in Memphis with assorted mobsters, accused of conspiracy to transport obscene material across state lines. – Gerry Damiano, the film’s director spent the rest of his career making pornography while looking over his shoulder fearing the return of the connected men that had threatened his life. The whole film and its cultural impact has been explored, argued and scrutinized. Surely there’s nothing left to see here, no stone unturned, right? Actually, yes there is. In fact, I think that the most interesting ‘Deep Throat’ story is a different one. Forget Lovelace and Reems, the trials and the mob, and the cultural analysis paralysis by anemic academics. I wanted to know about the mysterious actress Dolly Sharp who portrayed Linda’s friend ‘Helen’ in the film. She was an older woman, who looked like she’d stepped off the set of a sitcom like ‘I Love Lucy’. There was something unusual about her. She just didn’t seem to fit in. Who was she? Where did she come from? I knew that she’d made a handful of other adult films in a short period of time in the early 1970s, but she never gave an interview, and I found no biographical information about her. Almost everyone else from Deep Throat had been tracked down over the years, but Dolly… she just disappeared. For ten years, I searched for answers about Dolly Sharp and her life. I spoke to anyone who knew her. From Gerry Damiano and Harry Reems who worked with Dolly on Deep Throat, to actors who appeared in other films with her like Fred Lincoln and Jamie Gillis, even one of the first porn agents, Tallie Cochrane. And what I eventually found about her was surprising and remarkable. It’s another weird and wonderful story from the world of 1970s adult film. This is the first part of our new mini-series, The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp – Part 1: Who Is Dolly Sharp? This podcast is 34 minutes long. ________________________________________________________________________________ * The post The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp, Part 1: Who Is Dolly Sharp? – Podcast 109 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

There’s a saying that goes, “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” We’ve adapted that to say, “Golden age adult film plus time equals The Rialto Report.” And that’s because we’re particularly interested in how people who were involved in the birth of adult film remember that period with the benefit of time and hindsight. But occasionally we wonder: what would it be like to go back to, say, 1977? And listen in on a late-night chat with one of the biggest stars of the era? This episode of Rialto Report is a little different – it’s not a story, and it’s not an interview that we’ve done ourselves. Rather it’s an eavesdrop. A chance to be a fly-on-the-wall almost 45 years ago. It’s a conversation with adult film actor Lesllie Bovee at the height of her career. She was one of the biggest stars in the growing X-rated film business, and was based on the west coast at the time. She’d recently made hit films such as Eruption (1977), Maraschino Cherry (1977), and SexWorld (1978). She talks about the X-rated business and her feelings towards it in an unfiltered way. The conversation took place late at night, and both Lesllie and her interviewer are a little high. But it’s a rare glimpse of what it felt like to be making sex films, and stripping in clubs, at a time when it was still all rather new, unfamiliar, and undiscovered. At different points, Lesllie sounds confident, curious, and self-conscious – a contradictory mixture that is a little like the industry was back then. The conversation is with Carl Esser, a journalist, adult film screenwriter and composer (he made his XXX debut on the 1975 film Carnal Haven directed by Carlos Tobalina), and he also went on to date Lesllie. (For more details on Carl, you can read our article here). This conversation wasn’t made to be broadcast, so it’s not a professional recording, and the sound quality is variable. As a result, we’ve added a written transcription of the conversation below for you to read, and have included previously unpublished photos of Lesllie as well. This is late night with The Rialto Report. And Lesllie Bovee. In 1977. With special thanks to Sky Esser. This podcast is 56 minutes long. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Lesllie Bovee in 1978 Carl: Why did you want to do pornography movies? Lesllie: I had a boyfriend who was encouraging in that respect, but I met him through dancing, and so I was already into a sexy field. And I just took it to its logical conclusion. But the thing that really, really started me off on it was the time I was arrested for lewd and indecent exposure while wearing a full bikini, pubic hair sticking out of the top. Well, that was bad enough. It was actually just harassment. It was happening every other weekend, and two girls were getting taken over the week to jail for lewd and indecent exposure. But when I got to the jail cell, I was asked to take off all my underwear, and was allowed to wear only the dress that I had on top. When I was released from my jail cell, twelve hours later, my underwear had disappeared. I checked. They were not being held for evidence. They’d been stolen by the policemen. I mean, that’s really hypocritical. It was so hypocritical it made me mad. But the thing that really, really pissed me off, was when I… I ended up going to a jury trial on this. Now that’s embarrassing in itself. Taking a young girl, who’s doing nothing but dancing, and subjecting her, in front of twelve people, trying to make out what I did evil, and unlawful even. Unlawful. I mean, that’s outrageous. My policeman, the one that arrested me, was caught lying. So my case was dismissed. But had I been convicted, I would have stamped on my passport “pervert,” and I wouldn’t be allowed to go into certain countries. Carl: Pervert? Lesllie: Pervert. Yeah. They stamp it if you’re convicted. You are a pervert. So I mean, those are really heavy fines for something that is absolutely ludicrous. The fact that I’m lewd and indecent because I showed a part of the body that the Good Lord gave to me. So I had become missionary-like in my zeal for the fight against hypocrisy in sex. I mean it’s absurd. Carl: That’s why you got into pornographic films? Lesllie: Well, that’s one of the main reasons that I felt strongly enough to get into the industry of sex on screen, yeah. I felt that I could contribute to the world by being a young, pretty, sexy, intelligent woman, who had the guts to get up on screen, and fuck, and not be ashamed of it. And I love it. Carl: Are you trying to show how to fuck? Lesllie: No. I’m just trying to show how much… but honestly I give, how there’s nothing wrong with it. That it’s a normal function, that people do get off on it visually. I do get off on sex in front of the camera. Carl: But aren’t you trying to do better than average fucking, when you’re on camera?

In part one of our podcast with Porsche Lynn, we heard how she survived childhood trauma, befriended Angel Kelly at modeling school, became a stripper at Michigan’s notorious Cinema X, and made her way to Los Angeles where she quickly became one of the most successful porn stars of her era. In this second and final episode of her Rialto story, Porsche and I talk about how she founded the Pink Ladies – the first west coast support group for women in the adult industry – a collective that included Angel Kelly, Nina Hartley and Jeanna Fine – as well as Megan Leigh, who tragically went on to take her own life, leaving the club’s members devastated. We hear how Porsche helped bring American-style pornography to Europe and was one of the first from the industry to break in a young and eager Rocco Siffredi. Back in the States, she supported a new wave of interracial porn – falling for co-star Sean Michaels in the process – and the growing popularity of BDSM movies. Strap yourself in to hear about all this and more – including a romantic Italian pitstop with middleweight boxing champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler. This podcast is 81 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Porsche Lynn Nina Hartley, Porsche and Erica Boyer (from left to right)   Porsche with Robin Byrd (right)   Porsche with Sade   Porsche with Bill Margold   Porsche with Larry Flynt         * The post Porsche Lynn: The Other Side of Power (Part 2) – Podcast 107 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Here at the Rialto Report, we focus on bringing original or obscure content to light. We like to unearth stories long ignored, forgotten or under-appreciated, to complement the narratives we already know and reveal a richer, more human portrait of the influential adult industry. And that’s why it took us so long to ask Porsche Lynn to share her tale. Because we thought Porsche’s story had already been told. She’s been in the industry for 35 years and counting. She’s done many interviews across the decades. She’s had countless articles written about her, and wrote an autobiography – 2014’s The Girl with the Million-Dollar Legs. We figured there was no new information left to reveal. But after interviewing Angel Kelly – Porsche’s close friend and partner in crime for decades – we finally picked up the phone and called her. And we’re glad we did. Because Porsche’s story is so much more than we expected. After surviving serious childhood trauma, Porsche pivoted from thoughts of becoming a nurse to dreams of becoming a professional model. To fund her aspirations – and satisfy urges that had been there since she first pulled on white go-go boots as a little girl – Porsche began working as a dancer at Cinema X, Michigan’s answer to New York’s Show World. From there she headed west to make films with some of the biggest names in the business – well-known figures like Reuben Sturman, and less well known – but perhaps no less influential – like Lenny Burtman. She was one of the trailblazers to bring American porn to Europe and one of the first women to make many interracial films. She was a frequent guest on the semi-legendary Robin Byrd show on NY cable TV, and a BDSM movie regular working with directors like Fred Lincoln and Bruce Seven. Show World became her home away from home – at least until she began opening up her own dungeons, a business she continues to run to this day. And yes, she did in fact have her legs insured for a million dollars by Lloyds of London. This is part one of Porsche Lynn’s story. Prepare for a wild ride. This podcast is 83 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Porsche Lynn     Porsche with Angel Kelly           * The post Porsche Lynn: The Other Side of Power (Part 1) – Podcast 106 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

As The Rialto Report heads into an Easter break, we present an all-new podcast about the making of Centurians of Rome, a story we broke a few years ago, but that has been absent from our site since then. The film has been the subject of much speculation since the movie was first released in 1981. – It was supposedly the most expensive gay porn film up to that point – It was allegedly funded using the proceeds of a robbery – It was claimed to be owned by the prestigious Lloyd’s of London insurance company But what is the real story? The Rialto Report has tracked down and interviewed over 30 people to find out the truth – from those connected to the making of the film, FBI, police and lawyers, as well as friends and family of the protagonists. In this installment of The Rialto Report, the full story behind Centurians of Rome is finally told. It is the story of three men; a producer, a director, and an actor, and how their lives connected briefly in 1980/81 to make one of the golden age’s most notorious films. We featured the written version of this story two years ago – and now here’s the podcast. With sincere thanks to all those who contributed their memories to this article. This podcast is 69 minutes long. _____________________________________________________________________________________ ‘Centurians of Rome’ (1981) George Payne   George Payne and Scorpio   Scorpio tries to control an unresponsive horse           * The post ‘Centurians of Rome’ (1981): The Behind-The-Scenes Story – Podcast 105 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Fanne Foxe died this past week at the age of 84. She was famous for being the stripper that ended the career of one of the most powerful American politicians of the 1970s – Arkansas congressman Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. But Fanne, whose real name was Annabelle, was so much more than a scandalous footnote of history. While she grew up in small town in Argentina, she had big dreams of becoming a doctor, to follow in the footsteps of her father. But when she fell in love young, became pregnant and got married, her life took a turn. She and her then husband Eduardo began performing across South America, he as a cabaret musician, she as a dancer who turned to stripping for the money it offered. After bearing two more children, the family moved to the U.S. where Annabelle became Fanne, continuing her stripping career, eventually meeting Wilbur Mills and rising to the peak of scandal. Fanne’s fame post-Wilbur eventually drew her to towards the adult industry. Porn producers sent Jamie Gillis and Harry Reems to convince her to appear in a hardcore film for $1 million dollars – a role that Fanne considered but ultimately turned down. She was featured in Playboy and became a sex journalist for Cheri Magazine and then mens magazine Partner – work that her colleagues remember her thoroughly enjoying. But all may not have been as well as it seemed – and a series of events led Fanne to leave the adult industry, turning away away from her infamous Fanne persona and returning to life as Annabelle. When I tracked down Annabelle several years back, all the rumors were that she’d returned to Argentina, and had disappeared, lost to time. On the contrary, I found her in St Petersburg, from where we had a warm and entertaining conversation. While she didn’t want to revisit events of the 1970s, describing the years as a dark and difficult time, she was happy to share updates on her life after leaving the limelight. She told me she had remarried and had another child, a girl who unfortunately passed away in 2017. She reignited her love of learning, pursuing several degrees in business and marine science. She became a scuba-diving master at the University of South Florida, and an underwater videographer. And she reveled in time with her seven grandchildren. This is the story of Fanne Foxe and the life of Annabelle. This podcast episode is 58 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Fanne Foxe   October 5 1975: Fanne opens her family to the media for the first time   1976: Fanne Foxe poses for Playboy   Fanne Foxe working at Cheri magazine   Fanne Fox (middle bottom) with the 1977 Cheri team, including Peter Wolff, Annie Sprinkle, Jody Maxwell, Kim Pope, Andrea Ambers, Cherry Bomb, C.B. Lucci and others   1977: Fanne Fox in Cheri magazine   Fanne Foxe in burlesque regalia   Fanne Foxe revisits the famed tidal basin in Washington, D.C.   Fanne Foxe signing copies of her tell-all book   Fanne Foxe resuming later life as Annabelle *   The post R.I.P. Fanne Foxe (1936-2021) – Podcast 82 (reprise) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Who is John T Bone – and why did The Rialto Report find him languishing in jail when we looked for him? John T Bone was one of the more controversial figures in adult film history. But as we heard in the first episode of our mini-series about him, he was also an enigma wrapped in mystery with a fascinating past. Before he ever got involved in making X-rated films, he was a notable figure on the fashion scene in London at the height of the Swinging Sixties. Then he made millions trading in antiques, before becoming a successful art dealer in New York in the 1980s. Along the way he was part of a hoax involving Marilyn Monroe’s secret diaries, was close friends with Adrian Lyne, the director of Flashdance (1983) and Fatal Attraction (1987), and used Cher’s costumes from her Las Vegas stage show in porn films. He acquired a drug habit and a porn star. And that’s just scratching the surface. Now in the concluding part of The Search for the Real John T Bone, we find out how John became the bad boy of 90s porn, the truth – revealed for the first time – behind Jerry Springer’s secret sex tape scandal, how he made the infamous World’s Biggest Gang Bang in 1995, in which Annabel Chong supposedly had sex with 250 men in 24 hours, became the first Westerner to shoot adult films in Eastern Europe, introduced Rocco Siffredi to America, and was thrown into jail in the Far East for prostitution. But why, when The Rialto Report found him, was he was in jail serving a lengthy prison sentence, forgotten and alone, and willing to reveal all? This is the second part of our mini-series, The Hunt for the Real John T Bone. This podcast is 83 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. ___________________________________________________________________________________ John T Bone – Part 2 A selection of some of the people and topics covered in this episode. Savannah         Annabel Chong       Jasmin St. Claire   Kendra Jade   Cicciolina and Riccardo Schicchi   Rocco Siffredi   Zara Whites   John T Bone, whose real name is John Bowen, is sentenced to prison * The post The Hunt for the Real John T Bone – Part 2: Podcast 104 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Who is John T Bone – and why did The Rialto Report find him languishing in jail when we looked for him? John T Bone was one of the bad boys of 1980s and 1990s adult film, a moviemaker responsible for some of the most controversial moments in X-rated film history. He worked at the cheap end of the porn film business – but his films nevertheless always stood out. It was John, for example, who made the infamous World’s Biggest Gang Bang in 1995, in which Annabel Chong supposedly had sex with 300 men in 24 hours. Then he made the sequel with Jasmin St. Claire, and follow-ups too numerous to mention in a career that lasted over 20 years. But it wasn’t just John’s films that were controversial – John was the rare example of a director who was even more notorious than his work. If you look back at media coverage of the X-rated film industry from the 1990s, John’s name features prominently, and he appeared regularly on TV scandal programs like The Jerry Springer Show. He seemed to go out of his way to shock – and sometimes appall – people, winning awards for filming the most outrageous sex acts, one of which involved a quart of motor oil that… well, you might want to google that one. John’s films weren’t universally loved, but they did make a lot of money. Which was a bit like John himself. He wasn’t universally loved, and stories abound about his arrogance, egotism, and swagger. Tom Byron said John was an asshole; Paul Thomas called him cruel and manipulative – even Jamie Gillis said he could be crude and obnoxious. But John did well in the porn business, lived in style and owned a fleet of fancy cars that include a vintage Rolls Royce. By now, John T Bone had our attention. But when we started to enquire after him, a number of very different rumors started to emerge. First, we heard that he’d had been a notable figure on the fashion scene in London at the height of the Swinging Sixties. Then someone said he’d actually been a wealthy antique dealer, and another that he’d been a major art trader in New York in the 80s. We heard that John was close friends with Adrian Lyne, the director of Flashdance (1983) and Fatal Attraction (1987), and that he worked for Tony Scott, director of Top Gun (1986). Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones supposedly stayed with him whenever he was in Los Angeles. So how could all these stories relate to the same person – let alone someone who was also a scandalous pornographer? And where was John now? He seemed to have disappeared overnight. We wanted to find the answers, so we looked for him – in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Colorado, Florida, Thailand, Brazil and the Philippines. Each time we found an address where he’d lived, we discovered that he’d left years before. For someone who’d loved the spotlight for so long, it was surprisingly difficult to find what had actually happened to him. And then, finally, we did find him. Except not where we expected. He was in jail serving a lengthy prison sentence. He was forgotten and alone. And he was willing to talk and reveal all. This is the first part of our mini-series, The Hunt for the Real John T Bone. This podcast is 74 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. ___________________________________________________________________________________ John T Bone – Part 1 A selection of some of the people and topics covered in this episode. John’s involvement in the search for Marilyn Monroe’s lost diaries   John convenes a press conference to discuss a $100,000 reward to be given for Marilyn Monroe’s diary (from L to R: John Bowen, Douglas Villiers, Chris Harris and Susan Griffiths, a Marilyn Monroe look-a-like.) Photo dated: August 26, 1982.         Samantha Strong – one of John’s favorite performers     Tracey Adams, another of John’s favorites     Amber Lynn, who was instrumental in John’s early success providing costumes to adult film sets * The post The Hunt for the Real John T Bone – Part 1: Podcast 103 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Carter Stevens, one of the adult film industry’s true originals, passed away this week. He started to make his first feature film before the landmark success of Deep Throat, and he was still in the sex business thirty years later. For a time it seemed like he was everywhere. In the 1970s and 1980s, he directed a series of increasingly popular and ambitious films that included Lickity-Split, Teenage Twins, Rollerbabies and Honeymoon Haven. He was just as prolific as an actor too, and was a regular, uncredited crew member for many mainstream and adult film productions. He made loops, directed a series of films for the Avon Theater chain, and fought battles with drugs and charges of obscenity and of hiring an underage actress, before re-emerging in the 1990s with a successful fetish newspaper and publishing business. Ashley West remembers Carter, and the role he played in creating The Rialto Report. This episode running time is 71 minutes. ____________________________________________________________________________________ When I was a teenager, and into old blues and folk records, I read about the life of John Lomax. Lomax was a pioneering musicologist and folklorist who did much for the preservation of American music in the first half of the twentieth century. Back in the 1930s, he became concerned that much of the blues and folk music that he loved was in danger of being lost – and along with it the stories of the people who created it. This was because the people who had made much of the music hadn’t made a lot of money and over time they had simply disappeared. So in 1933, Lomax got a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, and acquired a state-of-the-art, 315 pound phonograph disk recorder which he installed in the trunk of his Ford sedan. Then he set out on the first recording expedition – traveling around the country and meeting many long forgotten musicians and singers. His mission was simple: he would set up his recording equipment and then get out of the way, just preserving whatever he got. These recordings became priceless as they enabled the world to hear directly from the artists themselves. Twenty years or so ago, I was talking about John Lomax with the adult film director Carter Stevens. I’d found a website that he’d set up, and it listed his phone number – so I gave it a call, and shortly afterwards Carter and I were having a wide-ranging conversation about films, music, politics, and New York in the 1970s. Carter made a comment that he wished someone would do what John Lomax had done – but with the pioneers of the adult film business. In other words, travel around and capture the stories about birth of the X-rated film world directly out of the mouths of those who’d been involved. I liked the idea, and we made a date to do a field recording of our own. The following week, I went to Carter’s house in the Pocono’s and set up some cheap recording equipment, sat back and let Carter talk. Now it’s fair to say that I was no John Lomax. After recording three hours of memories, Carter’s roommate walked through the room, tripped over the cable, disconnected everything, and we lost the whole recording. Thanks to Carter’s kindness, we decided to repeat the whole conversation over the phone a few days later so I set up a phone recorder. After another long interview with him, I realized that I’d forgotten to press the record button. I learned a lot from Carter, not only about the adult industry, but also how to make sure my equipment was working. That interview with Carter was the first I did – and since then I did hundreds more. Somewhere along the line, these field recordings turned into The Rialto Report. Carter passed away a few days ago. He was a real pioneer on the adult film scene, a genuinely engaging and kind man, and I owe him a lot.       The post R.I.P. Carter Stevens (1944-2020) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Kathy Harcourt was an English XXX star in America in the early 1980s. She appeared with Lisa DeLeeuw, Seka, Billy Dee, and Ron Jeremy in adult films and 8mm loops. She featured in magazines, stripped at the Melody Burlesk, turned up at all the industry parties. And then she was found dead in Manhattan’s East River amidst rumors of a mob hit. Over the years, her life and death has been a mystery. Until today. After 40 years, the truth about Kathy Harcourt is finally revealed. This podcast is 96 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. ___________________________________________________ Kathy Harcourt One of the great features of the golden age of adult film is the diversity of the performers. You had all shapes and sizes, ages and ethnicities. It seemed that everyone was welcome – as long as they were willing to have sex on film. The only thing was that they were nearly all American citizens. Sure, you’d expect that – as the X-rated industry in its early days sourced its talent locally. But even so you never really saw anyone with a genuine foreign accent. Which made an actress like Kathy Harcourt stand out. You see, Kathy was English, and spoke with an accent so English that it was almost comical to hear her talk on screen with performers like Billy Dee or Ron Jeremy. Kathy was a beautiful, voluptuous actress who appeared in ten or so pornographic feature films around 1980, and a bunch of 8mm loops too. She featured in magazines, stripped in the best clubs, and for a short time turned up at all the industry events and parties. She seemed bubbly and happy and sweet, and everybody spoke highly of her. And then she was found dead in mysterious circumstances. Kathy in Bahrain before she came to America and entered the adult industry   Kathy gets her adult start modeling for men’s magazines     Kathy posing with her friend and short-time boyfriend Ron Jeremy   Kathy with Marilyn Gee   Kathy is schooled by PT in Lips (1981)       Kathy unwinds at the infamous Bernards bar and restaurant in New York   Kathy goes blonde in Australia   * The post The Murder of Kathy Harcourt: England’s First American Adult Film Star – Podcast 102 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

From 1985 until 1997, Misty Blue Simmes was the biggest female name in professional wrestling. She held belts from the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) and the Ladies Professional Wrestling Association (LPWA), was courted by Vince McMahon of the WWE, and graced the pages of all the major wrestling magazines. But wrestling wasn’t Misty Blue’s first time in front of the camera. Before there was Misty, there was Diane – a married swinger who had a double life, with her husband Jon, as a stripper. Actually, they had more than one double life: they put on foxy boxing shows, mud wrestled, featured in men’s magazines, and performed in adult films as Bunny and Buddy Hatton – working with Gerry Damiano, Joe Sarno and many others. Theirs is the story of a small-town couple exploring the worlds of sex and entertainment for both fun and profit. And it’s a love story of a couple together for almost half a century, raising a family and always having each other’s backs. This is Misty Blue Simmes’ story. And Bunny and Buddy Hatton’s story. And a little ditty about Jack and Diane. With special thanks to Jon and Diane for sharing their story. This podcast is 45 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. ___________________________________________________ Outlaws and Outcasts A little ditty ’bout Jack & Diane Two American kids growing up in the heartland Picture this. It’s August 1978 in upstate New York. You’re driving down a county road during the lazy, hazy, dog days of summer. You see some tattered signs for the local fair, worn out from years of repeated use. Follow the setting sun and the chorus of cicadas until you come up on a city of tents. It sits in a large field that lays unused the rest of the year. Keep going. Track the smell of funnel cakes and hot dogs past the Ford Pintos and Chevy Impalas parked on the matted grass. You’re gonna see an unlikely mix of locals: Parents losing sight of excited kids. Town council members with painted-on smiles and sweating in polyester suits hand out re-election leaflets. Gangs of teenagers sneak cigarettes and make fun of rides they happily waited in line for just a year ago. Continue behind the stands towards the hum of generators until you reach two used RVs parked so close they’re almost kissing. There’s a length of weathered rope between the vehicles, holding up hand-washed clothes. You got neon bikini bottoms, mesh bodysuits, pony-fringed tops with deep necklines. Four pretty young women sit in rusty lawn chairs. One leafs through a magazine while tuning a cheap portable radio. Another pops gum, her legs propped up, painting her toenails maximum orange glitter. Two more pass a tallboy can of beer between them, swigging like truck drivers. The door to one of the RVs opens. A guy and a girl come out. They’re cocky; their confidence makes it clear they’re in charge. Jon is wiry, bearded and all business. He turns back to lock the door. Diane’s a cutie. She’s wearing cut-off shorts and her hair is feathered like Farrah Fawcett. She looks over at the girls and issues her instructions: “Grab the hose and the ring – it’s time to get dirty. Mud wrestling waits for no one.” * Jon meets Diane Suckin’ on chilli dog outside the Tastee Freez Diane sitting on Jack’s lap Got his hands between her knees Jon first set eyes on Diane just before he graduated high school in 1970. She was different from the girls he was used to seeing around. He’d spent his whole life in the same small upstate New York area he was born in, but Diane was new to town. She was in her junior year. She’d spent most of her life kicking around Maine and Vermont, the result of a father who had trouble holding onto a regular job. One year, she attended five different schools. That’s a lot for a young girl. And the relentless upheaval made her quiet and shy around strangers. Now Jon loves his hometown, but even he admits it’s working-class and redneck. This is love it or leave it America. Jon’s dad worked at the local General Electric plant like almost everyone else in town did. Either that or the paper mill. Jon’s mom’s claim to fame was working at a company that made Lawn Darts, a game so dangerous the FDA were forced to stamp a warning on it that read, “May cause fatal injury.” When Jon first met Diane he pulled out all the smooth lines he’d used on other girls, but Diane wasn’t buying them. Jon liked the challenge so he stuck at it. Eventually she gave in. I don’t know… Maybe she started to like him, maybe she was just worn down by him. Either way, the two started dating. After high school, Jon imagined becoming an oceanographer. He liked the way it sounded – no matter that he’d only seen the sea once in his life. Then he found he’d have to go to college and take a whole bunch of science classes. So he decided to take a year off. It’s been a long year ever since then. Jon also had a thing for motorbikes. Since he was a kid, he’d watched b

Jim South didn’t act in many adult films, and certainly didn’t take part in any sex scenes. He didn’t direct, produce, or finance many movies either. But if you watch any film made in Los Angeles since the mid 1970s, the chances are that Jim South was intimately involved in who you’re actually watching on-screen. For years his company, World Modeling, supplied talent to the adult film industry. Actresses would converge there from all over the country for a chance to be cast in X-rated films. The agency represented adult stars such as Shauna Grant, Marc Wallice, Ginger Lynn, Savannah, Katie Gold, and Christy Canyon. His office was a hive of activity, always at the center of things. His huge casting calls were legendary, as were the picture books that he meticulously kept with Polaroids of every actress taken on the day they turned up in his office for the first time. His agency was successful and profitable, but not without controversy. He had to weather all kinds of storms – the police had him under surveillance, he was arrested for pimping and pandering on several occasions, several high profile actresses that he got started in the industry committed suicide, he was charged over the underage Traci Lords scandal, and rivalries with other agencies sometimes spilled into physical violence. Somehow Jim survived. Maybe being an Irish, right wing Republican from Texas had something to do with it. Over the years the adult film industry changed, people changed, and social networking replaced the old order, but Jim South is still in business. The golden days may have gone but he remains the same. He’s still out there, looking for the next girl, the next breakout star. He’s one of the last of the original dinosaurs, and this is his story. This episode running time is 78 minutes. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Jim South, the most famous agent for adult film stars, died this weekend. With him, dies a part of the golden age of adult film. In the autumn of 1957, a lieutenant from the Dallas Police Department, called Red Souter, rented an apartment as part of an undercover surveillance operation. The target of his investigation was America’s first porn star, Candy Barr. You see, six years earlier, back in 1951, Candy had appeared in one of the most famous and widely circulated of the early underground pornographic films, a 15 minute stag film called Smart Alec. The cops sat up and took notice: the first problem was that Smart Alec was an explicit hardcore film – which was illegal anywhere in the 1950s, let alone a Bible-thumping redneck conservative stronghold like Texas. And to make matters worse, Candy had been only 16 when she made it. Over the years, Candy would insist that she’d needed money, and had been drugged and forced into appearing in the movie. Shortly after Smart Alec appeared, and while still underage, Candy was hired as a stripper at the Theater Lounge in Dallas, where the owner gave her the stage name ‘Candy Barr’ because she loved Snickers bars. Candy may have been underage, but she wasn’t shy. She bleached her hair platinum blond, and quickly became a headliner. Her image appeared on large placards dressed in her trademark costume of a cowboy hat, pasties, scant panties, a pair of pearl-handled six-shooters in a holster strapped low on her hips, and fancy cowboy boots. By 1957, the police were keen to nail her. In October of that year, lieutenant Red Souter led a team from the Dallas police who raided her apartment, where they found less than an ounce of marijuana which she was hiding in her bra. Candy was arrested for drug possession for her drug bust. Today that would be nothing more than a small-time misdemeanor, but in court Red Souter testified that the amount was sufficient to roll 125 joints from the evil weed. Candy was convicted, and received a 15-year prison sentence. The case was front page news and only made her more famous. Years later, Red Souter was asked about the case: It wasn’t just about drugs, he said. Candy had been an underage sex actress. That was immoral. Behavior like that needed to be stamped out. That was why he was a cop. He felt his job was to preserve the American dream. He took that seriously. Very seriously. Twenty years later in 1976, Red Souter’s son James set up a company, called the World Modeling Talent Agency in Sherman Oaks, a suburb of Los Angeles. By this point, James changed his name to Jim South, and his agency represented many performers and models who worked in X-rated adult movies and magazines. One of the people he represented was Traci Lords, an underage porn performer. When the scandal broke in 1986, Jim was arrested and charged for hiring the 16 year old Traci to appear in a sexually explicit film, ‘Those Young Girls.’ Just like Candy Barr, Traci would insist that she’d needed money, and had been drugged and forced into appearing in the movie. And just like Candy, Traci appeared on billboards selli

The Rialto Report is 100 episodes old today. When I first had the idea of doing a golden age adult film podcast, I realized it was a pretty specialized and niche subject area. But I thought that the real history of this time had never properly emerged, and I wanted to provide a place where it could be told by the pioneers, in an unfiltered way. Good or bad. I read somewhere that the average number of podcasts that people put out is 7. I figured I was good for 4, and if I really tried, maybe I could kick it up to 6. Good enough, I thought. Let’s do it. At that stage, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I sure as heck knew what I didn’t want to do. Firstly – I didn’t want it to be commercial: so that meant no ads, no promotions, no banners. I hate ’em. I’m sure you do too. Everything should be free in life. Secondly – I only wanted this podcast to feature people who were actually there, in the trenches of the business, taking the risks, suffering the consequences or enjoying the spoils – their voices have been neglected over the years, and I wanted to hear from them. That meant no bloggers, academics, or cultural commentators. The world has too many opinions right now. I just want real stories. And finally – I wanted no me. Nothing about me, or indeed nothing about any other host of this show. This isn’t about the presenter, it’s about the subject. Most of the time, I just want to get out of the way. Except for this episode. On this 100th podcast, I want to look back at some of the favorite moments from the last 99. And tell you stories behind how we got anyone to agree to an interview in the first place. Sometimes, I can’t believe we did. In fact, I have no real idea who listens to this. But you’re listening. And I’m happy to have you here. We’re 100 episodes old today. We made it past 7. So come on let’s celebrate. This is for you and me. –Ashley West This episode is 141 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ This episode, featuring highlights from the last 99 podcasts, includes: Rhonda Jo Petty: Happiness is the Truth (podcast 68) Rhonda’s candid and moving interview covers her difficult upbringing, her entry into the adult business in 1970s California, and how she’s found peace on a ranch in Arizona. Originally aired April 16, 2017 George Payne: Wild Man of Porn (podcast 2) George appeared in many New York adult films – both straight and gay – and straddled the film and video era too. And he could really act; his performances seethe with a nervous, unpredictable energy. Originally aired March 10, 2013 Paul Thomas: The 10 Provocations of PT (podcasts 88 & 89) Why did Philip Toubus – brought up in financial privilege and with recognized performing talent – enter the porn industry? Our interview tries to get at answers – and hold PT’s healthy ego in check. Originally aired February 17, 2019 Uschi Digard: SuperSoul (podcast 19) Uschi Digard was an indestructible, formidable pin up beauty who was emblematic of the sexual revolution in California. From the late 1960s through to the early 1980s, she was in hundreds of magazine spreads, had many issues dedicated to her, and appeared in countless softcore films. Originally aired August 25, 2013 Jeanne Silver: Real Wild Child (podcast 8) For a time in the 1980s, Jeanne was a regular in New York adult films and a featured dancer at the Melody Burlesk Theater – but her life started on the other side of the country in Arizona where she was born and grew up with the stigma of having part of her foot and leg amputated at an early age. Originally aired April 28, 2013 George McDonald: The First Adult Film Star (podcast 54) George McDonald was an adult film star at a time when there were no adult film stars. He started in the era of short, silent 8mm films and saw first hand the progression to full-length pornographic features within a couple of years. Originally aired September 6, 2015 R. Bolla: Adult Film’s Method Actor (podcast 12) Robert Kerman, star of Debbie Does Dallas and scores of porn films in the 1970s and 1980s, talks about his life as a struggling actor in New York, driving a cab to make ends meet, his move into adult film work, and how he nearly broke into the mainstream. Originally aired June 2, 2013 Helga Sven: Her Mystery. And Her Fan. (podcast 21) Helga’s story includes tales of mid-1980s video porn, the Vegas mob, Stalin’s Red Army, John Holmes, child abduction, Frank Sinatra, arson, attempted murder, and Candy Samples. Originally aired September 22, 2013 Jeff Stryker: Porn’s Enigmatic Star (podcast 26) Tales of Jeff’s upbringing, his start as a male stripper, delivering balloon-o-grams, meeting John Travis, Matt Sterling and Chuck Holmes and entering the adult film business, the success of films like Powertool and Jamie Loves Jeff, his notorious shower

‘Once Upon a Time…in the Valley’, a new podcast series co-produced and co-presented by The Rialto Report’s Ashley West, launches today with the first three episodes. Episode 1 – T-R-A-C-I It’s 1986. The San Fernando Valley. And, it turns out, the biggest star in Adult, isn’t one. Episode 2 – Wanted: Figure Models A 15-year-old Redondo Union High sophomore learns to fake it so she can make it… as a nude model. Episode 3 – We Kinda Made it Hardcore Traci lands the Penthouse centerfold–and the studliest stud in porn. Download via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RADIO.COM and everywhere podcasts are available. New episodes will drop every Tuesday throughout the series. Subscribe to the series for free here. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Press Release: C13Originals Launches Season One of its new Documentary Series, ‘Once Upon a Time… in the Valley’: The Traci Lords Scandal A real-life mystery and porno-noir created and written by acclaimed Vanity Fair writer and literary iconoclast Lili Anolik, featuring Ashley West, consultant on HBO’s The Deuce. Before there were sex tapes, there were sex tapes… C13Originals, the Peabody Award-nominated documentary studio division of leading premium podcast company Cadence13, announces Once Upon a Time…in the Valley, the real-life mystery and porno-noir podcast series created and written by Vanity Fair’s Lili Anolik, featuring Ashley West. Before there were sex tapes, there were sex tapes. Before there was Paris or Kim, there was Traci. The first, the best, the O.G. Hardcore since ’84. In the roaring 80’s porn world, Traci Lords reigned supreme. No one questioned her right to sovereignty. Only, it turned out, the biggest star in adult films was, legally speaking, just a child. As America would discover in July 1986, when the FBI busted down her door. Traci Lords was really Nora Kuzma, who’d entered the industry as a 15-year-old high school sophomore. Traci, the victim, was saved. And the industry, the villain, was very nearly destroyed. But what if the victim here was also the villain; the villain, also the victim? As Anolik cautions, “Put your condoms on, get that safe word ready” because she and Ashley are going in hard and deep. It’s the San Fernando Valley. It’s the mid-1980s, the moment the industry is exploding: moving from New York to L.A., from film to video, from the shadows to the spotlight. Traci may be the series’ focus, but its setting and supporting players—Ginger Lynn, Christy Canyon, Tom Byron, to name but a few—are so dynamic, they’re constantly threatening to upstage her. (Not that she’ll let them.) “It’s the story I’ve wanted to tell more than any other,” says Lili Anolik. “Just imagine Boogie Nights, if Boogie Nights had a three-way with Gone Girl and A Star Is Born—and it let Gone Girl be on top.” “Lili’s instincts for storytelling, and her brilliant writing style are on full display in this franchise,” said Chris Corcoran, Chief Content Officer, Cadence13. “The launch of ‘Once Upon a Time…in the Valley’ marks the continued expansion of the C13Originals slate, and the boundary-pushing, and thrilling ways we can tell compelling cultural stories with the best storytellers.” Once Upon a Time…in the Valley was created and written by Lili Anolik in collaboration with, and produced by Peabody-Award nominated C13Originals, a division of Cadence13. The series is Executive Produced by Corcoran and Anolik; produced by West; directed by Zak Levitt; edited and mastered by Chris Basil, Bill Shultz, Perry Crowell, and Ian Mandt; with theme music and original score by Joel Goodman. Lili Anolik is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Her work has also appeared in Harper’s, Esquire and The Paris Review, among other publications. Her latest book, the Los Angeles Times bestseller Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A., was named one of Esquire’s Best Books of 2019. Ashley West is the creator of The Rialto Report, a web and podcast channel that documents the Golden Age of Porn (1969-1984). He’s worked as a consultant on HBO’s The Deuce, and has published numerous pieces on the adult industry in The Daily Beast, several of which have been optioned for film and television. * The post ‘Once Upon a Time…in the Valley’: Episodes 1 to 3 Launched Today appeared first on The Rialto Report.

I’d always wanted to interview Angel Kelly. She was a big name in 1980s adult film, and one of the few black female superstars of the industry. She was a founding member of the Pink Ladies, the west-coast adult actress support group with Nina Hartley, Jeanne Fine, and Porsche Lynn. She acted with the big names of the day – people like Sharon Mitchell, Lois Ayres, Billy Dee and Mike Horner. And she was friends with Tupac Shakur, featuring in the video for his song “How Do You Want It?” But I wasn’t so sure that Angel Kelly wanted to talk with me. I first contacted her years ago and – while she was kind and polite – she told me she wasn’t ready to speak. She said the last time she sat down for an interview was 1996, and she just wasn’t ready to delve deep into her adult industry life. But she said we could keep in touch, so we did, trading the occasional texts and holiday greetings. But a few weeks ago, Angel Kelly contacted me and said it was time. I wondered what made her ready to do something we danced around for years. We set a date and I questioned if she would keep it. She did. And thank goodness – because Angel Kelly has quite the story to tell. So what has Angel Kelly been doing since her time in the business? And why is she finally speaking out now, almost 25 years after her last real interview? Here’s your chance to listen and find out. This episode is 87 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________   with Tom Byron     The Pink Ladies (from top left): Porsche Lynn, Angel Kelly, Nina Hartley, Jeanna Fine     with Nina Hartley     with Alicia Monet     with Jeanna Fine     with Jack Baker     with Tracey Adams     The cast of Sorority Pink: Angel Kelly, Porsche Lynn, Jeanna Fine, Barbara Dare, Nina Hartley     with Heather Hunter, Porsche Lynn and Robin Byrd     with Porsche Lynn (left) and Jeanna Fine (middle)   Angel today * The post Angel Kelly: Giving You the Best That I Got – Podcast 99 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Amber Lynn is the perfect example of the adult film video vixen in all her glory. Back in the 1980s, together with fellow stars Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn, and Christy Canyon, she was the face of the new era in adult film. Actually, forget film: they personified the industry’s move onto videotapes. These stars were young, they were wild, and they were on your VHS TV screens when your parents went out. Come to think of it, they were probably on the same TV after you’d gone to bed too. But Amber wasn’t a clone of anyone else. She stood apart from other performers of her era: she was no girl next door: somehow, she convinced you she was both pretty, sweet, and feminine, and she could kick the ass of the high school quarterback if he looked at her the wrong way. You see, Amber was different. Her background was unconventional. Her childhood had more tragedy than you anything you’d wish on your worst enemy. She was a punk rock teen, who got into the adult film industry through a friendship with Althea Flynt, then wife of Hustler mogul, Larry Flynt. She saw the porn movies as a vehicle of personal expression, not to mention rebellion against the strict world around her. She dated Jamie Gillis, the industry’s king of kink, for years. And she was the first to use her adult film stardom to make a fortune feature dancing all over North America. And did I mention that she had a brother, Buck Adams, who was also in the porn business at the same time? How did that work? Amber had a long career, with many ups as well as a few downs. Let’s face it, she partied like it was 1999 when it was still only 1985. But perhaps what’s most remarkable about Amber is that unlike almost every other person with whom she started out, she’s still going strong. She’s re-invented herself more times than time and again. Nowadays her fame has led to the mainstream, she was in a cameo in a Michael Douglas TV show, she was mentioned in HBO’s The Deuce, she’s a philanthropist and an avid animal rights activist, and she has her own radio show. What is it like being the last woman standing from the golden age? You can visit Amber’s site here. This episode is 104 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________     Amber, with Ginger Lynn                   Amber, with Marky Ramone   * The post Amber Lynn: Rebel Yell! – Podcast 98 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Have you ever had that experience when you’re watching a film – and you become fascinated with one particular actor? You’re seeing them play a part in the movie, and you know it’s just a performance. It’s fiction. Acting is just acting, right? But then you wonder how much of their real self might be coming through the screen. A few years ago, I saw an unusual piece of film that featured an actor called Mary Stuart. Mary was a reasonably well-known X-rated performer in 1970s New York. She featured in a number of successful adult films, like like The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), Naked Came the Stranger (1975), Wet Rainbow (1974), Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974). She was a sweet-looking and spontaneous presence, always engaging and interesting. But outside of her films, hardly anything was known about her. And when she eventually disappeared from the screen around 1977, she seemed to disappear from the world too. Now this film I watched was actually an old sex loop. It was a silent and primitive thing that I doubt anyone else has ever even seen. It was similar to hundreds of others that were made around that time: it was a plotless, pretty pointless exercise. And it had bad camerawork too. But then something in the loop happened that surprised me. And that one moment captured on film made me wonder what I was seeing. Was this an intentional part of the movie, or was this a real moment and something else was actually going on? That moment sent me on a journey that lasted for several years, as I set out to piece together Mary Stuart’s eventful life – in and out of film – and see if she could be found to tell her story, and answer my question: Whatever happened to Mary Stuart? Mary Stuart   This episode is 37 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ I carefully pick the reel of 8mm film out of the tin in which it has sat for decades. Inside the metal container, there’s also a piece of paper on which a handwritten note has been scribbled: “Mary and Levi and other – 9/23/1973.” I wonder if anyone has seen this film since it was first made. I spool the film reel onto a projector, and switch it on. Images from the fragile strip start to flicker across a white-washed wall that acts as a makeshift screen. There’s no title card or credits or clue as to what’s about to unfold. Two figures materialize in primary colors, sitting on an unpleasantly brown couch. They seem to be talking to each other, though there’s no sound except for the flicker of the projector. The film zooms in, clumsily and without warning, on the face of the male. He is recognizable as adult film performer Levi Richards. He smirks gently at his female companion, flirting shyly with her. The camera jerks sideways to study his partner, clumsily re-focusing so we can linger on her features. She has a lean ballet-dancer body, cropped dark hair, and wears round Billie Jean King glasses that are comically large on her puckish, boyish features. Her mouth pouts in an asymmetrical and asexual way and, when she smiles, her teeth protrude unevenly like a white zipper. She’s not conventionally attractive, but her face invites attention. She projects a vulnerability that makes you feel you’re intruding on a private moment. But this is a porn loop, and there are conventions that must be obeyed, so within minutes our players disrobe, their modesties are abandoned, and a sexual encounter – with its multiple mutations – begins. Surprisingly it is the coy female who takes the lead, dictating the positional variations. Their interaction continues obliviously – even when a third person, a light-skinned black man, enters the room. Without being invited, he too undresses and quickly enters the fray. And that would be that – except for one brief detail, a disturbing moment towards the end of the single-scene movie. The camera is framing the female’s expression, a perspiring and wide-eyed gaze. Out of nowhere, she is slapped in the face by Johnny-come-lately. It’s a shock. It’s a hard slap. Nothing leading up to this moment had suggested this outcome. She appears surprised, and bewildered too, that it has happened in this scenario. And for a brief moment she turns her head and casts a confused look towards you, the viewer, that implicate you in what’s just happened. And then, just as quickly, the picture flicks to black, as the single disconnected reel of film flails noisily announcing the end of the show. I turn the projector off, and the room returns to darkness.   *   I saw the loop years ago, and it left an impression on me. Firstly, there was the actress with the quirky, androgynous features. I recognized her as a New York adult film performer who went by the name Mary Stuart. While never rising to the level of Times Square box office porno queen in the vein of Linda Lovelace, Ge

If you popped a porno tape into your VCR anytime from the late 80s on, chances are you’d be watching Randy Spears in action before long. Randy was a good-looking guy with solid acting chops and a talent for comedy, and he made close to 2000 adult movies between 1988 and the early 2010s. He performed with the biggest names in the business, like Sharon Kane, Nina Hartley and Tori Welles – and won a ton of industry awards. It wasn’t an obvious career choice. Randy started life as a solid midwestern boy, growing up in a churchgoing family. He worked in a nuclear factory before joining the military and becoming an anti-submarine warfare operator. But Randy felt the pull of performing, turning to modeling and acting in commercials before becoming a Chippendales dancer. Lured by Hollywood, he made his way to LA and found some early mainstream success while dating Linda Blair. But in 1988, the writers’ union went on strike and the town shut down for almost half a year. But not the Valley, where porn was thriving and looking for handsome young men who could read lines and come on command. Hungry for work and money, Randy began nude modeling before eventually making his way into adult films. The business embraced him with open arms and Randy quickly became one of the most prolific actors on the scene. But then after a full 25 years of performing sex on screen, Randy made a very public statement – he was done with porn. Not only that, but he was dedicating himself to becoming a more devout Christian. On this Rialto Report, April Hall talks to Randy Spears to find out why. It’s a tale of porn and love, drugs and jail, death and god – even a turn into politics when Greg found himself in the middle of Stormy Daniel’s public affair with Donald Trump. This episode is 101 minutes long. You can follow Randy on Twitter @itsrandyspears, on Instagram @realrandyspears, and book him through Gitoni Productions. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Randy Spears Randy in his service uniform with his grandmother                     Randy Spears and ex-wife Gina Rodriguez   * The post Randy Spears: Hear My Prayer – Podcast 96 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The adult film actor Jamie Gillis died ten years ago this week. I started The Rialto Report because I wanted to show that there was much more to the world of adult films than just adult films. And Jamie was one of the best examples of that. Jamie was one of the great performers in film history, but he was much more than that. He was a French literature graduate, a theater actor, mime artist, traveler, gambler, writer, lover of fine food, and much more. He was someone who enjoyed life and lived it to the full. I knew him well, yet every time I saw him, I discovered a new story about him. This is one of those stories. This episode’s running time is 45 minutes. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Jamie Gillis On April 20th, 2008, I went over to Jamie’s house to celebrate his 65th birthday. He lived in a townhouse in midtown Manhattan, and his girlfriend, who owned a Mexican restaurant, cooked a meal for the two of us. Afterwards we went over to the Garden to see a boxing card. Jamie knew the promoter so we had ringside seats, and we sat down next to glittering stars such Eric Estrada, Eric Trump, and Dr Ruth. Somehow watching two people covered in sweat, engaging in strenuous physical activity in front of us, seemed an appropriate night out to have with a porn star like Jamie Gillis. It seemed even more appropriate when I saw Dr. Ruth offering advice to Jamie. If only she knew who she was talking to, I thought. As we left the hall, five or six kids barely into their 20s rolled towards us, a mass of uncontrolled arms, legs, beers and burgers. I stepped to the side, but one of them stopped in his tracks, frozen to the spot. He’d seen Jamie. Jamie looked back with a wry smile as the kid started pointing at him. They clearly recognized him, and they probably wanted a selfie or an autograph with their porn hero, one of the greats of the adult film industry. Then the kid shouted out: “You! I know you! You’re the one who fucked Vanessa del Rio!” Jamie looked slightly disappointed, and then bemused. “Maybe that’s the best I could wish for,” he said as we left the building. “Because I’m definitely the one who fucked Vanessa Del Rio”. When we grabbed a drink afterwards, I asked Jamie about the kid’s reaction. And I asked him about how people treated him because of his adult film history. Jamie said that it was a mixed response. The adult industry was a bubble: within it, he was well-known, respected, almost an elder statesman. And that lulled him into a false sense of security. It obscured the way that the rest of the world reacted to him. He called the rest of the world, ‘the Perfect People’, with more than a small amount of irony. The Perfect People were different. At best, they looked at him with indifference. More often they were cold and contemptuous. I asked him when he first became aware of the way that the Perfect People looked down on him. Jamie got a faraway look in his eyes. “When I was arrested for murder,” he said. And then he told me the story. He didn’t talk about it much, but it changed his life and he still lived with it. It was the story of three people whose lives intersected one summer’s night: there was an aspiring supermodel, there was a famous Canadian radio and television presenter, and then there was Jamie, a renowned porn star. It all came together June 1982 in a New York townhouse at 246 East 23rd St. And none of them would be the same afterwards. * Marie-Josée Saint-Antoine Let’s face it, the 1980s was the decade when America became a spoiled brat. It was the time of ‘The Art of the Deal’, ‘Barbarians at the Gate’, and Gordon Gekko’s pumped-up mantra that ‘Greed is Good’. And lo Reaganomics begat disposable income, which begat rampant consumerism, which begat materialism, which begat the Sony Walkman, Air Jordans, and Jennifer Beals in a baggy sweatshirt. Yes, the Greed Decade was materialistic, claustrophobic, and obsessed with escaping the past: no wonder its first major craze was Pac Man, a computer game about a character who devours dots in a maze while trying to escape ghosts. So it was inevitable that the fashion world was similarly brash and superficial, a mess of shoulder pads, big hair, spandex, and mullets that consigned subtlety and minimalism to the past. Amidst the plastic fakery stood Marie-Josée Saint-Antoine – and someone like Marie-Josée Saint-Antoine really stood out. Marie-Josée was the real deal, the new kid on the block, the next big thing, and the future It Girl – all rolled into one. When the decade started, she was a 21-year-old unknown brunette from a middle-class family in Montreal, Canada. She was a happy-go-lucky, friendly kid, popular and gregarious, innocent and unaffected by the world around her. She was normal too: her middle-of-the-road life was a dime-a dozen existence with a run-of-the-mill future. She would’ve continued down any num

In 1972, Alfred Sole, a first time filmmaker, made an X-rated film called ‘Deep Sleep’. He didn’t know much about adult films or the industry, so he shot it in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey and using a cast and crew made up of friends and family members. This meant that the local lawyer, banker, policeman, high school teachers, funeral home director, the mayor’s wife, even Alfred’s wife and his mother were part of the film-making group. It seemed like everyone in Paterson knew someone who was involved in the making of ‘Deep Sleep’. And so predictably when it came out it was a smash hit in New Jersey, with long lines of people breaking box office records trying to get into the theaters to see it. But not everyone was impressed. And what followed was one of the most remarkable and notorious prosecutions of an adult film in American history. First the filmmakers were indicted on a state basis under an ancient anti-fornication statute, and then on a federal level for interstate transportation of pornography. Suddenly Alfred Sole found himself at the center of a storm. He was under attack both from the law and from everyone who’d helped him make the film in the first place. On this Rialto Report, the people involved speak out for the first time in 40 years. We speak to – Alfred Sole, Deep Sleep’s director           Kim Pope, Deep Sleep actress           Joseph Friedman, Deep Sleep cinematographer       Butch Taylor, Deep Sleep’s soundtrack composer           John Niccollai, Assistant District Prosecutor             This episode’s running time is 69 minutes. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Meeting Alfred Sole To set eyes on Alfred Sole is to like him instantly. He’s just welcomed me onto the Warner Brothers soundstage in Los Angeles where he works. At 75, Alfred is technically of retirement age, but he remains an in-demand production designer on popular television shows like MacGyver, Veronica Mars and Castle. As I approach him, Alfred smiles broadly and extends his hand. He has a boyish face and a soft-spoken, warm manner. He’s of average height with salt-and-pepper hair. He’s like your friendly uncle, or your favorite person to sit next to at the neighborhood bar. But looks can be deceiving, so I have to ask myself: Is this really the man who in the early 1970s was at the center of a national scandal about a pornographic film titled Deep Sleep? A film he was rumored to have shot in his parents’ home in Paterson, New Jersey using a cast and crew made up of family and friends? And it wasn’t just those close to him who participated in the movie—it was alleged that many in his suburban town had taken part, including a local lawyer, banker, police officer and funeral home director. Hell, even the mayor’s wife, high-school teachers, and Alfred’s mother were said to have been part of the erotic production. Alfred Sole (right) What followed was one of the most notorious national prosecutions of adult film in American history. Is this the man once described by the government as ‘Public Enemy Number One’? As I sit across from Alfred today, his phone rings. It’s his ex-wife back in Paterson. She wants to know if the person wanting to talk about Deep Sleep has arrived. He gently tells her we’re about to start our interview, then proceeds to hold the phone away from his ear to protect himself from the volume. It’s been 45 years since the film was splashed across the news, but Alfred’s ex has a loud-and-clear message for him: Say nothing. Nothing at all. No good can possibly come from re-visiting the past. Some stories are better left untold. * The Origins of an Accidental Pornographer Alfred Sole is a born-and-bred Jersey boy from Paterson, an industrial community of 150,000 residents, 20 miles west of New York City. He vividly remembers the Paterson of his youth in the 1950s.   Alfred Sole as a child The suburban city was a mix of working- and middle-class neighborhoods with clearly defined boundaries. There was the Italian enclave, and there was the Irish enclave. The wealthier families—all doctors and lawyers and mostly Jewish—lived by Eastside Park. The working-class Catholics—among which Alfred counted himself—mostly lived by the city’s landmark Great Falls of the Passaic River. Alfred was always curious about the wealth residing in Eastside Park, so much so that one of his main goals in high school was to date a Jewish girl. He went so far as to pretend he was Jewish because the girls he desired weren’t allowed to date outside their religion. Alfred’s creativity extended beyond his ability to craft a suitable backstory. He had a love of architecture, design and fashion that he honed at the University of Florence in Italy and then used to open a fas

Ashley West of The Rialto Report writes: I’ve always loved Pat Barrington. And if you know who she is, I’m pretty sure you do too. If you’ve never heard of her, Pat was big in the 1960s, when she was a popular actress, model and stripper. She was a stunning and statuesque woman, a mess of high cheekbones, flashing dark eyes, and long limbs. And somehow she managed to look different every time you saw her. She could be dark haired, a redhead, or a bleach blonde. She could look seductive or matronly, playfully sexual or innocent. Actually not so much innocent. Pat Barrington looked like sin on fire. And she had a great screen presence too without even being a great actor. So who was Pat Barrington? About the only thing anyone knew for certain was that Pat had a short film career in the 1960s. Over a five-year period, she made memorable appearances in films by cult filmmakers like Russ Meyer, Ed Wood, Bill Rotsler, Harry Novak and others. She also appeared on television in the series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and got a part in a big budget film Marlowe (1969) starring James Garner. And then in 1969, after her last appearance in front of a movie camera, she disappeared from public view, and became this mysterious and elusive figure. I tried tracking her down for over 20 years but had no success. No one seemed to even know much about her. Old movie friends remembered her beauty and professionalism, but they all drew a blank when I asked them the big, burning questions: where did Pat Barrington come from, and where did she go? Sure, I found a few details about her, but much of it seemed contradictory. For example, I stopped counting the number of different names she used, not to mention the conflicting birth dates she claimed. And that was about it. I could never find out much more than that. And then, in 2013, I made a breakthrough, and I was able to write a profile of her entire life for The Rialto Report website. It was a wild tale of sexploitation films, a serial killer, go-go dancing, sexual assault, Hollywood, nude modeling, Sam Fuller, Lenny Bruce, Robert Mitchum, and much more. But a few weeks after I posted the story online, I withdrew it – amidst threats of violence, involving an aging mobster and a boyfriend who were both unhappy that Pat’s story had finally been told. Now five years later, I want to tell what happened – not only the fascinating life of Pat Barrington herself, but also the story behind the search for her. This is what happened. This podcast is 71 miniutes. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Pat Barrington: Prologue (2015) In 2013, I got a call from someone I didn’t know. He said he was a fan of The Rialto Report, and he said he had a story idea for us. You see, he had a friend called Robert who was living with a lady called Camille, Camille Grant to give her her full name. Now Camille was in her late 70s, but she’d been a stripper for most of her life. This guy on the phone said she’d be a good subject for a profile. I explained that at The Rialto Report we’re mainly interested in people who’d worked in the adult film industry during the 1960s, 70s or 80s. But the voice at the other end of the line told me that in fact Camille had been a film star in the 1960s – except she’d used a different name – she used to be known as Pat Barrington. Pat, or rather Camille, was now retired and living in Florida. Was I still interested in contacting her? There was only one problem, he said. And that was Camille herself. She’d had a wild life, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted anyone to know about it. In fact, she was pretty secretive. I said that of course I was interested in speaking to her, but after that, the trail went completely cold and I didn’t hear back from the caller, or from Camille’s boyfriend Robert, or from Camille herself. A year or so later, I tried to make contact with Camille again. This time I got a call back. It was Robert, Camille’s boyfriend, who had sad news to share. Camille had passed away just a couple of months before in September 2014. Robert was still devastated by her loss, but something else was upsetting him too. He kept repeating that he didn’t think that he really ever knew her. Sure he’d lived with Camille for the last four decades of her life – but now he’d started questioning who she really was, and what she’d done before meeting him. Robert told me that Camille had always been secretive about her past ever since they’d first met. He paid little attention to it, and never pressed her. But after Camille’s passing, Robert had to clear out Camille’s closet – and that’s where he came across boxes and boxes of items relating to her life. And it was life that he knew nothing about. It was an overwhelming collection. Hundreds of photos, letters, calendars, address books, notes, contracts, business cards, legal documents, diaries and much more. The earl

How is that as we approach our 100th podcast, The Rialto Report still hasn’t interviewed Kelly Nichols? It’s not as if she was a brief flash in the pan who came and left in a hurry: in fact, Kelly had two noteworthy careers in the adult industry. First, she was a star in front of the camera in the early 1980s, where she was considered one of the best actresses in films such as Roommates, Puss ‘n Boots and In Love, and earned legions of fans and plenty of awards for her performances. Then she was even more prolific as an adult film makeup artist, working on hundreds of movies from the late 70s all the way up through just a few years ago. Along the way, she also appeared in the film ‘King Kong’ (1976) as Jessica Lange’s stunt double, had a memorable role in the cult horror film The Toolbox Murders (1978), and even made an adult film in in Australia the 1980s. Yet given all her success, how is it that someone recognized by many as one of the most beautiful women in the business, has often thought of herself as an ugly duckling. We don’t know why we’ve waited so long, but at last, it’s time for Kelly Nichols story. This episode is 81 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Kelly Nichols                                         The post Kelly Nichols: At Last – Podcast 93 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

George McDonald, star of Behind the Green Door (1972) and perhaps the first male star of the adult film industry, died yesterday in California. He was 70 years old. Ashley West records his memories of George in a new introduction to our podcast interview with George. This podcast is 99 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ George McDonald When I started The Rialto Report, George McDonald was one of the first people I wanted to include. Of course I did: George McDonald was an adult film star at a time when there were no adult film stars. This was an era of shame and secrecy when no one used their real name, and most people didn’t use any name. But for a time, his name was everywhere – he once counted nine theaters showing his films in San Francisco at the same time. He started in the era of short, silent 8mm films and saw first-hand the progression to full-length pornographic features within a couple of years. He was in the industry so early that one of his last films was the Mitchell Brothers’ Behind The Green Door – which is often cited as one of the first adult films. I knew that back in the 1970s he lived in Sausalito, a beach-town full of houseboat enclaves just four miles north of San Francisco, so I looked him up online – even though I never expected George McDonald to be his real name, or that he still lived in Sausalito. I found a number, called it, and to my surprise, a few moments later I was speaking to George. So what kind of person ends up being the original porn star? Maybe not the kind of person you’d think. George McDonald was an all-American boy, high school athlete, good-looking, good grades, good future. He signed up to the Air Force when the Vietnam war was going on. And he had political aspirations too. He was sure he’d be mayor one day. But along the way he ended up working in porn films, headlining a live sex show in Hawaii where he competed with John Holmes, and living a life no one that had ever really lived before. He made loops, cheap one day wonders, and big budget films. He worked for every one of the early west coast filmmakers. He even wrote an autobiography, called ‘Dirty Movies’ – by far the best, though perhaps the only, first-hand account of what was like to be in the adult film business before there was an adult film business. We published the book exclusively on The Rialto Report website – and you can read it there free of charge. A few years ago, Robert De Niro heard about George and his story and flew out to Sausalito to meet him. They spent the afternoon together discussing George’s life and film career. De Niro said he was interested in making it into a film, though in the end, nothing came of it. When George retired from the industry, he opted for the quiet life. Which in his case meant that he joined his friend and filmmaker Alex de Renzy on a drug-smuggling round the world boat trip. Seriously. George and I planned to tell the story of this crazy trip, which involved a wild group of porn filmmakers traveling to the Far East trafficking in contraband, but we just never got around to it. Over the years, I visited George in Sausalito. He took me to the locations where the opening scenes of ‘Behind the Green Door’ had been shot. We’d have dinner at the No Name Bar, at the same table where George would meet Alex de Renzy or the Mitchell Brothers for production meetings. And in between visits, we have long phone conversations about incidents in his life that he’d suddenly remembered. He last called me three weeks ago to tell me his illness was in remission, and that he was feeling better. He wanted to talk about what a good life he’d had. With hindsight, it feels that he was calling to say goodbye. George would also send greetings cards. He sent cards to everyone he considered a friend, for every single holiday you can think of – Christian, Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Mexican… you name it. That meant I got a card about every two or three weeks throughout every year. Each one was a ray of sunshine that reminded me that I was friends with George McDonald. A good, good man. George, with fellow adult film star, Richard Pacheco The post R.I.P. George McDonald (1949-2019) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

John Stagliano is one of the great survivors of the adult industry – and like any survivor, he seems to have had more lives than a cat. He started out in the mid 1970s as – take your pick – an aspiring writer, economist, dancer, magazine publisher, actor, and performer in sex loops. He even became one of the first Chippendale dancers, when the male stripping troupe was wildly successful. But if all this makes John Stagliano sound unfocused or less driven, nothing could be further from the truth. John has always been a leader, not a follower, and along the way he invented new ways of doing things. For s start, he turned a semi-successful career as a bit part porn actor into the creation of Evil Angel – one of the most successful production companies and distributors of pornographic films. Evil Angel was a different kind of beast in that it hired directors to make films – but then permitted them to own the films they created. Evil Angel’s job was to handle the films’ manufacture, distribution, promotion and sales for which John would take a percentage of the gross profit. It was a unique model that resulted in people like John Leslie, Greg Dark, Joey Silvera, and Alex De Renzy making films for the company. Or take John’s film The Fashionistas: a movie that dealt with a controversial subject, cost half a million dollars, took three weeks to film, and had a running time of almost five hours. The result was perhaps the most successful adult movie of all time – it sold over 100,000 copies in just its first month of release, set a record for the most AVN Award nominations for a single title — 22 – and it yielded a Las Vegas show that ran for several years. And then there was the creation of Buttman. Even if this was John’s only achievement then his position in history would be secure. After all, not many people have come up with original ideas in the adult industry, not least ones that change the whole way of making films. In 1989, he produced The Adventures of Buttman, the first in a series that’s credited with inventing the “gonzo” adult film genre. It was a simple hand-held approach to filmmaking, where the performers broke the fourth wall, and there was minimal editing or music. The focus was on creating reality in sexual performance. Along the way, there were road bumps. That’s inevitable in a career that has lasted the best part of 50 years. He lost a girlfriend, porn performer Krysti Lynn, to a car accident, he was diagnosed with HIV in the 1990s, and there have been court cases – more than a few – from obscenity busts to claims of the #metoo variety. Given how John started, he could’ve done just about whatever he wanted – but his life and contribution to the adult industry have been both entertaining and important. This is his story. This episode is 89 minutes long. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ John Stagliano – The Buttman series   John Stagliano – Fashionistas   John Staglian0 – Fashionistas, The Musical   John Stagliano – Evil Angel     The post John Stagliano: Truth and Reality – Podcast 92 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Candy Samples, who enjoyed a long career as a hugely popular buxom model in men’s magazines and as an actress in adult films, passed away this week. She was 91. Candy Samples was one of the true larger than life figures that lit up the early adult industry: she appeared in cult movies such as Russ Meyer‘s Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979) (where she was ‘The Very Big Blonde’) and Up! (1976), and also Flesh Gordon (1974), Fantasm (1976), Deep Jaws (1976), and The Best Little Whorehouse in San Francisco (1985), as well as tens of loops – to name but a few. She was in black and white cheesecake photo sets from the late 1960s, thousands of magazines, and scores of films – from softcore to hardcore, from loops to catfight wrestling shorts. She had a mischievous, friendly look that stood out from all the other models. She often played the roles of older women that somehow looked like your mother’s naughty friend, exuding a mysterious sex appeal. And then there were her breasts. With her formidable physique, she looked like an Amazonian queen; fit, tanned, and invincible. Her staggering physique made her an instant favorite, and for many years she toured as an exotic dancer. Somehow she just seemed to get more popular with age, and she developed a huge following that endured right through to her retirement in the late 1980s – and even today her magazine spreads exchange hands for elevated prices. After she retired, she remained active – writing columns in the 1990s for magazines like Juggs. And she had an online fan club where she would have chat sessions with fans. When we started The Rialto Report, we knew we wanted to interview her. We figured that as she’d been active in the industry for almost 40 years it wouldn’t be difficult to find her. We figured wrong. She’d disappeared from public view, changing her name on multiple occasions (she was rumored to have married eight times), and we spent years trying to track her down. After leaving messages for her with scores of people, we got a call from a person one day who told us that Candy was living with him. We packed our bags, and went to meet her. Our podcast tells the story of what happened next. We are indebted to GH and KB for their kind assistance in putting this feature together. This podcast is 45 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. ________________________________________________________________________________________ Candy Samples – The Early Years Candy Samples (February 1965)   Early modeling show (1966)   Candy (second from left) in early modeling assignment (1967)   Early Modeling         Candy and Uschi When The Rialto Report interviewed Candy Samples, her fondest memories were reserved for her friendship with Uschi Digard.         Fetish Photos (1979)         Dancing across the country                         Life with Pat Romano In the early 1980s, Candy’s career was managed by ‘Pat Romano‘. The relationship didn’t end well, and Pat later died in jail where he was serving time for drug dealing.       Private Sessions Candy would sometimes pose for private photographic sessions for fans, who she encountered when dancing in clubs around the country.                   Personal Appearances             A rare photo of Candy with Russ Meyer at a convention.     Vacations and Traveling London (1981)   Austria (1981)     Venice (1986)       Cancun (1988)   Retirement           Candy Samples’ scrapbooks         The Rialto Report interview Candy Samples recording The Rialto Report interview with April Hall       Candy Samples with The Rialto Report’s April Hall     The post R.I.P. Candy Samples (1928 – 2019) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

What happens when you’re raised in a loving suburban home, an athletic but painfully shy kid who went to church every Sunday with his very Catholic parents? A boy who developed an early love of dance but had to hide it because his mother thought that would mean he’s gay? A young man who was so intimidated by girls he stayed a virgin until he was 20 years old? Well you go on to become one of the most prolific male porn stars in history of course. Mike Horner entered the business in the late 70s – just a few months after he lost his virginity and a few weeks before his 21st birthday. He stayed in the business for the next thirty years racking up thousands of film titles and sex partners. So how did a good Catholic boy run off the rails of a straight and narrow life? How did a brief adventure turn into an almost life-long career, and certainly an enduring identity? And what happens when you outgrow the business that in part taught you to be the man you are? In this episode of the Rialto Report, we speak with Mike Horner about his decades long career in the industry and what he looks forward to now. Hint, it starts with S and ends with X. This episode is 57 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Mike Horner           * The post Mike Horner: Porn’s Late Bloomer – Podcast 91 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The Rialto Report talks with Christy Canyon – about her life as a pioneering performer at start of the video age of adult films. This episode is 132 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Christy Canyon The first thing you notice when you meet Christy Canyon today, is just how good she looks. I honestly think she looks better now than she did 35 years ago… wait, that can’t be right. Has it really been 35 years since she burst onto the scene and became one of the biggest names in adult film back in the 80s? Together with Ginger Lynn and Traci Lords, Christy Canyon was one of the original superstars of the California video era, when the girls had big hair, fast cars, and ripped through the business, tearing up the rule book. Christy was part of a different kind of performer to the women who had come before. These new video vixens looked like the hottest girls in your high school, and for a time, Christy was everywhere – in loops, in films, and in magazines. Christy first retired from the business within a year, but since then, she’s had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra – and along the way, she became a Vivid girl, was a featured dancer, published a book, appeared in over 100 films and loops, and is a member of every adult film hall of fame ever invented. For me, she was always the star that girls wanted as their best friend, and your boyfriend wanted to run off with. Nowadays she hosts her own radio show – which is a natural for her, as she’s one of the most entertaining people you could hope to listen to. And if anyone tells you that all women in adult films are exploited, just send them to Christy. I’ve rarely met someone as tough and independent as she is, yet she still has a heart of gold.               Christy Canyon, with husband Rob and The Rialto Report’s April Hall * The post Christy Canyon: A Twelve O’Clock Girl in a Nine O’Clock Town – Podcast 90 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

On the last episode of The Rialto Report, we spoke to adult film actor and director, Paul Thomas, about the first part of his life. How he came from a wealthy background – one that owned household-name businesses, such as Sara Lee and Jim Beam – and how he was brought up in the lap of luxury. How he achieved success and fame on stage in musical theater, starring in Hair on Broadway, and in the 1973 film version of Jesus Christ Superstar. How he was snapped up by the prestigious William Morris Agency for a big career in mainstream television and movies. And how he started making adult films in San Francisco for the Mitchell Brothers. If you haven’t heard the last episode, we recommend that you listen to that one first: this episode will probably make more sense if you do. We’ve been wanting to interview PT for many years, but he finally agreed to this interview because of several questions that had been on his mind for decades: Why, when he had so many lucrative and socially acceptable alternatives, did he become one of porn’s most famous names? Why did he stay in the business for so long? And what effect has it had on him? PT hoped that by re-visiting his past, he could perhaps reach some deeper understanding of it. These are the provocations of PT. This episode is 81 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________       *     The post Paul Thomas: The 10 Provocations of PT, Part 2 – Podcast 89 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Paul Thomas, or PT as he’s typically known, is one of the iconic names of the adult film industry. He was born Philip Toubus, and started out as a porn performer for the Mitchell Brothers in mid-1970s San Francisco. Until the last few years, was still in the business as a director. During the past four decades, PT won every kind of adult award – from Best Actor to Best Director, and was inducted into every Hall of Fame the sex film industry has ever invented. But there are two aspects to PT’s background that make his presence and success in adult film even more interesting. First he came from a wealthy family – one that owned household-name businesses like Sara Lee and Jim Beam – and he was brought up in relative luxury. And secondly, by the time PT started his career in sex films in his mid 20s, he’d already achieved considerable success and fame on stage in musical theater. He’d starred on Broadway in Hair and played the role of Peter in the 1973 film version of Jesus Christ Superstar. In fact, he was being groomed by the William Morris Agency in Hollywood for a big career in mainstream television and movies. So with all the money and success, what motivated PT to move into the newly formed adult industry – a business frowned upon by much of mainstream society, not to mention full of legal and reputational risks for its participants? It all comes down to a series of questions: Why? Why did he do it, when he had so many alternatives? Why did he stay in the business for so long? And what effect has it had on him? These questions have stayed with PT to this day. I’ve known PT for years, and we’ve talked about doing an interview for almost as long as I’ve known him. We actually started once, but after over five hours of conversation, we realized that we hadn’t even reached the time he’d started school, so we scrapped the idea. Recently though we decided totry again, and this time I got PT to agree to a strict format. I would pick ten areas of his life that have shaped him. Ten provocations – in keeping with the biblical theme of his most famous role in Jesus Christ Superstar. I would ask him whatever I liked about these subjects – and nothing would be off the table. We’d cover adult films, both as an actor and as a director, his troubled relationships, his experiences with drugs, his multiple times in jail, and much, much more. And we’d finally see if we could get closer to answering the question that has plagued PT for so long: why the hell did he go into, and stay in, the adult film industry? This is the first time PT has told his story. These are the ten provocations of PT. The above picture is Paul Thomas photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe. This first episode of two is 86 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Paul Thomas Paul Thomas in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)   Paul Thomas in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)   *   The post Paul Thomas: The 10 Provocations of PT, Part 1 – Podcast 88 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

  The actor Robert Kerman, also known as R. Bolla, died this week in New York at the age of 71. His career lasted over 10 years, from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, and encompassed work for all the main adult film directors. He was perhaps most well-known as the bumbling Mr. Greenfield in Debbie Does Dallas. As a tribute, we’re re-releasing our 2013 interview with Robert, together with an all-new introduction in which The Rialto Report’s Ashley West remembers spending time with Robert.   This podcast is 62 minutes long. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ I first became aware of Robert in more mainstream films – specifically in the notorious Cannibal Holocaust from 1980, but even before that a film at the other end of the spectrum, the romantic comedy, The Goodbye Girl, in 1977. The star of The Goodbye Girl was Richard Dreyfuss – which in my mind was appropriate because I always thought of Robert as the Richard Dreyfuss of the adult film business. They were born within six weeks of each other, into middle class Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Both were passionate about the craft of performing, and came through the ranks doing theater to define themselves as actors. Both men were short and neither had leading man good looks but they succeeded playing animated, wise-cracking, characters who were always worth watching. Both won awards, acted prolifically, had problems with drugs – and up and down relationships, and their careers tailed off after the 1980s. And they were both fans of each other too. When they made The Goodbye Girl, Dreyfuss took Robert aside and told him how much he’d admired him in adult films, and was particularly friendly to him on the set. But of course the similarities between the two of them end there. By the mid 1970s, Richard Dreyfuss was a Hollywood A-lister, and Robert Kerman was R. Bolla, more commonly recognized for being Mr Greenfield in Debbie Does Dallas rather than for his Hamlet. Could Robert have made it in mainstream films and theater work? In a parallel universe, was he the successful character actor, regularly employed, and appreciated for his craft, and Dreyfuss the embattled sex and exploitation journeyman actor? Robert certainly felt that he’d missed out, and he thought that the adult industry was to blame. Or rather, it was the way he’d been seduced by it. Whenever he spoke to me, he always insisted that he’d loved his time making porn films. It’d given him regular work and money, and a chance to practice his acting in front of a camera. And, sure he was a big fish in a small pond, but who doesn’t like being a big fish in any pond? The problem, he said, was that the industry made him lazy. It took away the hunger that an actor needs to get up in the morning and go to countless auditions, and give everything he’s got, only to get rejected time and time again, before getting back up and going back out looking for that one part, that one role, that will make the difference, that will be the break-through. When I first met Robert 10 years or so ago, he was still hoping for that big break. Unfortunately, he’d fallen on hard times, the medical treatment he paid for his terminally-ill cat had left him penniless and near destitute. He was living in a small apartment in the center of Manhattan in a subsidized building reserved for people who had worked in the performing arts. Outwardly, he appeared cheerful, but his situation was desperate. He watched television 24/7, was surrounded by medications to help him in his poor health, and confessed to having names for the two rats that would come out at night when he watched films. When I visited him after that, he was always great company, full of conversation and insight about history, politics, films, and much more. He often spoke about his friends from the adult film days – and one in particular, a fellow adult film actor, Michael Gaunt. Michael and he had started in the sex film business in the same era, and shared a passion for the craft of acting. They lived together for a time, and practiced Shakespeare scenes with each other. In the years since then, their lives had gone in parallel directions, with many highs and lows. Neither had climbed the heights that they’d dreamed of when they recited lines together night after night, but they were still going, still dreaming big. Robert hadn’t seen Michael for many years and wondered how he was doing. I found that Michael was starring in an outdoor production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in upstate New York, and offered to drive Robert up to see the show. Robert was only too happy to go – and we decided to keep it a secret from Michael until after the show. In one section of the play, Michael – who’s always a physical actor – comes into the audience and recites his speech directly to an audience member. When it came to that moment, Michael jumped into the audience and found himself suddenly confront

Last week The Rialto Report published an article about meeting the Avon film director, Phil Prince – and we were overwhelmed by the positive reaction we received. A number of you asked why we didn’t put the story out as a podcast as well. The simple answer is that we usually do one or the other, but we realize that many of you prefer to engage with us through our podcasts – so as an early holiday present, this time we’ve done both. If you’ve already read the article, you can skip this podcast episode – it’s largely the same as the written piece, although we do have a short amount of audio of Phil himself at the very end. But if you haven’t got around to checking out the article, we hope you enjoy this look back at the life of one of the golden age’s most incredible figures, Phil Prince. It’s one of our favorites stories. Thanks – and happy holidays. This podcast is 72 minutes long.   With thanks to Phil Prince, George Payne, Brian O’Hara, and byNWR.com You can read ‘Fragments of Avon: Journeys into the Dark Heart of XXX’ – including Part 1: The Boss, Part 2: The Procurer, and Part 3: The Director. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Phil Prince   Annie Sprinkle and George Payne   Dixie Dew and George Payne   Phil Prince       The post Avon Films: Phil Prince’s Story – Podcast 87 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The 1970s was the decade of adult films and theaters in New York City. It started out with cheap and crude black-and-white softcore films, enjoyed the breakthrough of porno-chic spearheaded by the landmark film Deep Throat (1973), and ended with big-budget films that looked like regular Hollywood films – with fully explicit sex. At the one end of the spectrum were champagne directors like Radley Metzger, Chuck Vincent and Joe Sarno – experienced filmmakers who turned their skills to the new and commercially attractive market for pornography by making sparkling, sophisticated or humorous movies. At the other end of the scale were the Avon films, a series associated with the chain of New York XXX theaters that included the Avon 42nd St, the Avon Love and the Avon 7. The Avon films form the sleaziest chapter of golden age adult films. These were not the mythical cross-over movies that would entice mainstream viewers into the theaters. In fact when U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered a comprehensive investigation into pornography in the mid 1980s, the resulting report held up examples of the most reprehensible films – and Avon films were top of the list. So who was behind the theater chain? Where did they find people to appear in the movies? And who made these strange, violent films that still endure today? Today The Rialto Report starts a multi-part look into the Avon empire, an untold history that stretches back almost a century. This podcast is 62 minutes long, and is accompanied by the written article below.   With thanks to George Payne, Estelle Scheier, Elizabeth Trotta, N. Carroll Mallow, Mildred ‘Mickey’ Offen, Brian O’Hara, ‘Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville’ by David Freeland (NYU Press), byNWR.com and many others who contributed to this oral history. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Prologue: The Ghosts of George Payne The phone rings with an insistent tone. It’s George Payne. The phone always rings more urgently when George calls. It matches his impatient manner. His rasping movie-trailer-voiceover-ready tone is unmistakable and, as usual, he starts without preamble: “I’ve been thinking about the Avon films. We made them at Vince Benedetti’s Adventure Studios in Queens.” George has perfected the art of stream-of-conscious questions, and they tend to emerge in reverse order. “Why don’t we go over there and take a look? What happened to that place? What are you doing today?” I point out that Vince died a few years ago, and that he’d sold Adventure Studios a few years before that. There’ll be nothing left there now, I say. George continues obliviously: “So many films were shot there. All the Avon films. OK? All the crazy Phil Prince movies. And they were the wildest films I ever starred in. The wildest that anyone ever made.” There’s a pause as if George has been swallowed by a wave of misty-eyed nostalgia, or perhaps it’s PTSD. “The Story of Prunella. Tales of the Bizarre. The Taming of Rebecca. OK?” George lists film titles as if they’re cake ingredients. I’m concerned for anyone who may be overhearing his side of the conversation. “Kneel Before Me. Forgive Me, I Have Sinned. Dr. Bizarro. Oriental Techniques in Pain and Pleasure. OK?” Another pause. “What time shall we meet there?” he asks. George Payne in his Avon heyday George is right. The Avon films were wild. Over thirty years after they were made, they remain the most singular and controversial series of New York adult movies. Even today, they occupy a cult-like niche in porn film history, which is all the more remarkable given how they were made: budgets rarely exceeded $15,000, shoots seldom took more than 72 hours and most cast and crew members had little experience in the grammar of film. And then there was the sex: raw, violent, confrontational and jarring. Often it was as far from titillating as you could imagine. It was a dislocated, cracked vision of the power of sexual dominance. Avon films’ only success was at the box office: they weren’t just ignored at the industry award ceremonies that attempted to provide a façade of respectability to pornography, they were swept so quickly under the carpet that they were barely even noted. This wasn’t how XXX bigwigs wanted to present themselves to an already porn-skeptical public. The holy grail of mainstream crossover success would never materialize if Avon films were allowed to be the norm. But these are also the reasons why Avon films have endured. In an era where any kink can be satisfied in some dark and forbidden corner of the internet, the Avon films still have the power to shock. George Payne was Avon’s top dog in front of the camera. Not only the most ubiquitous presence, but also the most electric. No actor has committed more to his craft than George. No halfway measures, just a complete dedication to unhinged characters. In the Avon films he screamed

As much as we enjoy talking with veterans from the golden age of adult film, I’m aware that their perspectives are always those of an insider. Their observations, experiences, and even memories are affected by the fact that they were wrapped up in the industry. And an insider isn’t always the most impartial witness. So we’re always keen to seek out people who ended up in porn by accident, or for a short period of time. People who never intended being part of the business. We want to hear what their fresh eyes thought of this unusual world. On this Rialto Report, we hear from one such person – a crew member on Taboo – American Style (1985). He was working in a theater in Manhattan when he got offered work on the set of the film. And ‘Taboo – American Style’ was a great place to start. It was one of the last big budget films made in New York. It had an incest theme, was directed by Henri Pachard, and featured Gloria Leonard, Paul Thomas, Taija Rae, Raven, Joey Silvera, and Kelly Nichols. It was eventually divided into four different feature films – each of which were hugely successful. So what did our crew member think of what he saw? What were his impressions of the people? How strange was this world to him? And when the film came to an end, did he ever want to go back? With great thanks to Douglas McMullen. This podcast is 36 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Taboo American Style Taboo American Style: Part 1 – The Ruthless Beginning:   Taboo American Style: Part 2 – The Story Continues:   Taboo American Style: Part 3 – Nina Says, “I’ll Do It My Way” And Becomes An Actress:   Taboo American Style: Part 4 – The Exciting Conclusion:   Raven   Raven   Taija Rae   Taija Rae   Carol Cross   * The post ‘Taboo American Style’ (1985): An Outsider’s Story – Podcast 85 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Keli Richards’ career in adult films was short and sweet. Her flame burned brightly at a time when Ronald Reagan was president, video was king, and Los Angeles was staking a claim to be the adult film capital of the world. She was part of the mid 1980s cohort that included Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn, and Christy Canyon, and she was known for her big hair, Boston accent, and enthusiastic performances on-screen. She worked with all the old favorites, from John Holmes, Tom Byron, and Jerry Butler, to Patti Petite, Erica Boyer, and Sharon Mitchell. For a time, she had quite a following, and even had a song written and named after her by the Arizona rock band, Gin Blossoms. And then life happened, and Keli moved on and moved away, and left the business – having appeared in over 70 films and countless magazine spreads. But Keli’s story is about more than the adult film industry. It’s about what happened before Keli started making movies, and about what occurred afterwards – and it comes with an advisory warning. The following conversation makes for some uncomfortable listening. If you’re wanting stories from mid 1980s adult films sets, stick around – we’ve got them. But, as you’ll hear, that’s only a small part of the story. Keli’s a survivor, and has been exceptionally brave to share her story with us. As she says, she wants to do to in case it can help anyone else who may listen. Which brings us to today. You see, recently Keli decided to make a comeback, and return to adult films. And by recently, I mean in the last few weeks. She’s now in her early 50s, and has had no contact whatsoever with the business for over 30 years. In recent days, she’s moved back to L.A. and has been looking for work. Why is she doing this, where has she been, and how did she get on when she looked for adult movie work in the last few days. And what happens when someone steps out of a time machine from 1986 – and expects adult films today to be the same as they were when they left – over three decades ago? This is the Keli Richards story. This podcast episode is 74 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Keli Richards                       The post Keli Richards: Coming Out Of The Shadows – Podcast 84 appeared first on The Rialto Report.